Coming Through
by Aki and Tenshi
Summary: Rumors about Kurt Hummel range from arm-breaking to fire-setting, so new transfer student Blaine Anderson should really keep his distance from the sarcastic, pink-haired deviant. But Blaine doesn't, and that might be the best, but most chaotic, decision he's ever made. Skank!Kurt AU with canon, adorkable, preppy Blaine. Endgame Klaine friendship-romance.
1. First Day

Aki - There are a myriad of reasons I want to write a skank!Kurt AU and why I am writing it with the themes I am writing it with. I swear, I could write an entire essay, but I figure I should let it stand for itself. I've been stewing over this for a while now, so I hope you enjoy it. Disclaimer, there is a French class in this chapter that includes French dialogue. Most of it is written via Google translate and is probably extremely inaccurate. Also, I am not providing translations for the French for several reasons, but one is particular, this story is from Blaine's perspective and he doesn't understand French very well, so as he is confused, so are you, the reader.

* * *

His mom's hands are laced tight on the steering wheel.

"Are you sure, Blaine?" she asks.

"I was sure five minutes ago, and I'm still sure now." In the mouth of another teenager this would have sounded like snotty backtalk, but Blaine lifts it from these depths with a polite, teasing smile and a neutral tone.

"Well, Dalton doesn't start for another week, so… I want you to know you're allowed to change your mind. It's okay not to be ready."

Blaine unlatches his seatbelt. He knows if he sits here in front of the school any longer, Mom might just be able to convince him to turn back

"I need to do this," he tells her. He reaches for the door handle.

"Blaine –," cuts her voice quickly. Her hand is on his shoulder.

Blaine looks to her, and her eyes are wet. Crap.

She grimace-smiles through her own worry just for him. "Blaine, I love you. You are brave, and strong, and amazing. You're doing to do great."

Blaine ducks his head, really not needing to be crying on his first day back in public school. "Thanks, Mom," he mumbles. Her sentiments are much better than his father's gruff, 'About time, son' that makes Blaine want to both grit his teeth in suppressed rage and huff in exasperation.

He pushes open the car door and climbs out. First day of school, first day at a new school, first day back in public school. Blaine knows he can do this. He tugs at the strap of his mostly empty satchel, and enters the school through the double doors.

He's greeted by shoulders and roughly brushing-by bodies and not a single 'excuse me'. He focuses on his breathing. This was not the orderly hall behavior he had grown used to at Dalton.

The office. He's supposed to go the main office first thing to get his schedule, locker number, and all that paperwork. Switching schools a week before the school year starts means he hadn't received that info ahead of time.

Doing his best to weave through the crowd, he tries to get someone's – anyone's – attention. "Excuse me, can you tell me where the office is? I need to… find the office."

Not a single response.

The bell rings. Has he really been lost that long? The masses get more rough in there hustle to get to their homerooms. But on the upside, the crowd grows smaller.

By the time the crowd has thinned to stragglers, the second bell rings. Now that there is some visibility, Blaine starts checking out the door labels for a hint of his location. That's when Blaine gets hit with the hardest body yet, spinning him half around and knocking his satchel off his shoulder.

"Watch where you're going, bowtie," spits out the voice of his assailant (though Blaine doesn't believe that this person had been particularly targeting him; at least, he hopes that's not the case).

Blaine catches just a glimpse of _the assailant_ as the person moves on in the hall without giving Blaine a second glance. He's clearly male, even though his voice was high and almost feminine despite the callousness to it. He's taller than Blaine, though that's not much of a feat, and wearing heavy combat boots. Blaine's not sure why the boots, of all details, are the one that he notices and remembers.

…

Blaine eventually finds the office, where he is given his schedule and post-it note with his locker number and combination from a secretary who was more interested in playing 'Words With Friends' than making eye contact. He finds his homeroom, or the last three minutes of it, and is (thankfully) forgiven for his tardiness. He even finds his first and second classrooms without a hitch. Turns out McKinley High is actually fairly easy to navigate with room numbers that are ordered sensibly. It has nothing on the sprawling and zig-zag nature of Dalton, which is what happens when you turn a building that had begun as a residence into a school.

Third period is a study hall, but today that time slot is dedicated to a meeting with the guidance counselor about his transfer and assimilation into the school. Miss Pillsbury's office is the epitome of orderly and prime, as is the woman herself. She smiles kindly at Blaine as he enters.

"How's your first day been so far, Blaine?" she asks him.

"It's only been a couple hours, but okay," he says. It's a polite, political answer. He doesn't want to complain about the difficulty he's had with the other students, in that they've so far completely ignored him.

"Your mother made me aware of the incident that occurred at first high school."

Blaine tenses and nods with a tight jaw.

"I want you to know that you come to me at any time with any problems that you may have adjusting, or with classes, or with other students. This school's not… well, it's not perfect. Let's say that. But I want this –," She waves her hands vaguely to indicate her office. "To be a safe place."

It's an improvement from his old, old school's administration at least, if not exactly Dalton. "Thank you," he says.

"Now, let's talk about extracurriculars. They're good on college resumes and there's no better way at making friends… I have a list here." Miss Pillsbury starts to go through a desk drawer.

"I was in an acappella choir at Dalton. Do you have anything like that here?"

Miss Pillsbury just beams at that tidbit of knowledge. "We have a glee club. The New Directions. They're meeting for first time this school year this afternoon in the choir room right after last period. I'll tell Mr. Schuester to expect you?"

"Yeah, that sounds perfect actually," Blaine says, feeling more inspired right now today than he had at any point so far. Glee is something to look forward to, and maybe Miss Pillsbury is right in that it might be the best way to make new friends.

There's a heavy, singular bang on the office door, making both Miss Pillsbury and Blaine jolt in their seats. Miss Pillsbury gets from her chair to answer it.

"Oh, Kurt, you're early… surprisingly."

"Anything to get out of class," replies a droll voice, a figure leaning languidly in the doorway.

Wait. Blaine recognizes that voice… his assailant. Blaine checks the feet. Yup, combat boots, laced halfway up the calf, over a pair of skinny jeans – really skinny jeans.

Looking up, this is the first Blaine has seen his assailant's face, which is pale and sculpture-like. There's a wide streak of hot pink in the front of his hair. Light glints off of two piercings – an eyebrow bar and a ring at the corner of his bottom lip – as this boy's face shifts from a blend of disinterested and irritated to a variant blend of disinterested and irritated. While not a type of style Blaine would usually ascribe to – he prefers tucked in and orderly – on this guy it actually all comes together into something…

Okay, Blaine needs to stop. _Needs to stop_. When he evaluates a boy's appearance in such detail it means something. Blaine finds this guy attractive, physically, at least. His personality so far is leaving much to be desired.

"Blaine and I are just about done. Unless there's anything else you want to discuss?" Miss Pillsbury looks to Blaine. He shakes his head no. He doesn't.

Before Blaine can even get out of his chair, this _Kurt_ has slunk into the office and plopped both heavily and lazily down in the chair next to his. He's so slouched down that he appears considerably shorter than Blaine sitting, although Blaine knows that's not the case.

As Blaine is ushered out the door, and Miss Pillsbury closes it behind him, he overhears her say to Kurt, "I hope we can start out this year positively."

…

Blaine takes a desk in the front row in his next class and tries to remain only mildly perturbed when the desk beside him remains empty as every single other fills up as the class enters in bunches. He's just the new kid, not the black plague.

"Bienvenue à la classe française deux," the teacher, Mrs. Boggart as Blaine's schedule reads, announces from the front of the room. "Comment allez-vous?"

After a pause, Mrs. Boggart waiting patiently with a dampening grin, a few students stutter out a mechanical and barely remembered response: "Je vais bien, merci, et vous?"

"Bien, bien," she says with a few claps at the abysmal response. "J'espère –"

The classroom door pushes open quickly, and it is none other than Kurt "the assailant" Hummel that barged into Blaine's guidance counselor meeting barging in now.

"Tu es en retard, Monsieur Hummel."

Casually, Kurt pulls a slip of paper with two-fingers out of his absurdly tight jeans (how had Blaine not noticed just quite how _are they actually painted on_ tight his jeans were before?) and flicks it onto her desk. He spies around the room – back row to front – until he finds the only empty desk, the one next to Blaine.

Scoffing, he saunters over, pulls out the chair with a clank, and drops into it. Blaine watches him with a drift of the eye, but not the turn of the head, through every step.

Mrs. Boggart clears her throat to re-gather the class's attention, getting them to respond to her questions. Now, Blaine has to admit that foreign languages tend to be one of his weaker subjects, but the class almost refuses to talk, period, just so they don't have to try and talk in French. It only last for the first ten minutes before Mrs. Boggart's forced grin turns flat. It's rather disheartening to watch.

"Fine," she finally says, her voice bland in English. "We're pairing up to do talking exercises." She pairs up the students with someone sitting near, and Blaine knows what's coming before she reaches him. "Mr. Hummel and…," she peers at him, confused. "Mr. New Kid."

What was this school?

Kurt glances sideways at him, like it's his first time noticing Blaine's existence. Maybe it is. Kurt had made it so fully and so quickly onto Blaine's radar, but who's to say that's mutual. Kurt might literally keep running into Blaine, but that doesn't mean this isn't the first he's stopped to really look where he was going.

A studious looking girl shoots her hand up in the air. "Mrs. Boggart, what's the talking exercise about?"

"Anything. Absolutely anything. As long as it's in French."

Kurt laughs quietly. It's the most engaged gesture Blaine's witnessed from him yet.

"Je m'appelle Blaine," Blaine says tentatively.

Kurt raises a sleek eyebrow. "Tu t'appelles noeud papillion."

"What? I mean, quoi?"

Kurt leans forward, close into Blaine's space as Blaine stiffens in it. He tweaks Blaine's bowtie, a little rough, and repeats, "Noeud papillion."

Bowtie. It means bowtie. Like Kurt – before Blaine knew he was named Kurt – had called him in the hall, after their first and most physical collision.

With no prompting, Kurt starts spouting off sentences in perfectly-accented French well beyond first-day-of-French-two level. Blaine's too blown back in surprise to follow, but if he wasn't, he probably didn't have the French knowledge to follow anyway. He catches a few familiar words and phrases, but not enough to puzzle it together into sense.

Kurt pauses – perhaps waiting for the response Blaine doesn't have. He shakes his head. "Un autre imbecile."

"Okay, I'm not conversational in French yet, but I know what _imbecile_ means," Blaine retorts, incidentally just as Mrs. Boggart is making her rounds.

"All in French, new kid," she says as she passes.

"Je m'appelle Blaine," he calls after her in an act of crass daring he never would performed at Dalton. Kurt _almost_ looks amused.

"Bien!" Mrs. Boggart yells back.

"Peut-être tu n'êtes pas si mal, noeud papillion," Kurt says, though Blaine's misses the exact wording of his sentence, and only hears his nickname.

Blaine wishes he had the words to say, 'you're kind of confusing, Kurt Hummel.'

…

Mrs. Boggart made them switch partners halfway through class to continue there "talking exercises" this time after handing our scripts of questions for them to practice. Blaine's new partner spent most of their time together texting under her desk, only spurting out a few awkward French words when Mrs. Boggart walked past.

This leaves a lot of free time for Blaine's eyes to wander over to Kurt, now twisted around in his chair sideways to face his new partner – a neebish kid turning desperately through his textbook for answers as he stutters out French words accented with _ums. _

Blaine can't see his face, but he just imagines Kurt staring down the boy, increasing his nervousness.

Blaine shouldn't be imagining Kurt doing anything.

He tries to force his thoughts and his eyes away. He shouldn't be concerning himself so with the Kurt Hummel-type. 'Trouble' as Blaine's Mom would term him. The kid with combat boots, sneer, and coming loudly and blasé late into class, barging in on Blaine's meeting, nary an inch of respect for authority in him.

It's clear what type Kurt Hummel is. Very clear as Kurt Hummel presents himself in a certain way, and Blaine knows all about presentation. He wears neat, parted hair and bowties for his own reasons.

But those jeans were really tight. Blaine owned his fair share of tight jeans. This Kurt character might have literally panted them on. But they looked really nice on his long legs and up to his…

"The hell you looking at?" Kurt says snidely, looking over his shoulder to glare at him. Blaine's caught and now wide-eyed at the accusation. He never planned to go back into the closet with his return to public school. If Dalton taught him anything, it was confidence in himself. But Blaine wants to be out on his own terms, and preferably not the target of some gay panic bullying.

When Blaine manages to look Kurt in the face, the boy exudes shock with his wide round eyes, so unlike his usually glare.

Kurt casts his eyes down his back, as if trying to determine the trajectory of Blaine's gaze just moments before. Blaine's glued to his chair – glued in position.

"Were you – ?" Kurt starts, and Blaine almost doesn't even recognize his voice. Only seeing his mouth move along with words makes sense that they were Kurt's.

God, Blaine has flummoxed the troubled kid by staring at his ass. And is Kurt going a little pink around the edges?

The bell rings. Blaine jolts and Kurt jolts, and the moment is broken. The room is filled with screeching chairs and slamming books, but none screech nor slam louder than Kurt is his flight.

Then this thing starts to fill Blaine up starting from his gut through his chest until it fills his head: dread. With robot motions he collects his schoolbooks and follows the flow into the hallway, drifting like a leaf on stream. He's not going to get to be out on his own terms, but Kurt's. It's inevitable now that he's revealed his hand. As a new kid, that's all he had with his yet unformed identity.

Kurt might be a loner, Kurt might not be well-liked, but he was established. He had a reputation and some of the nerdy students moved out his way in the hall, as the cheerleaders sneered as he walked past. Blaine had no power to stop any rumors, no reputation to counteract them. It's _over._ Welcome to another high school hell. It's not the being out and proud, it was being found out and proud by checking just some guy out, on the first day, which had the potential for his downfall – for bullying and violence.

Somehow he made it to his next class. It was all a matter of how long it would take to for everything to crash.

…

The shoe didn't drop that day, although Blaine waited for it with resigned anxiety. Yet nothing occurred. He didn't even spot any wayward or curious looks, overhear any directed whispering. One public school was like any other; he knew when people were talking – and not kindly – about him.

By the end of classes, Blaine had to determine Kurt hadn't said anything, or at least not to anyone with the intention of spreading it. Such rumors wouldn't die flat on takeoff. Instead of retreating, he decides to try out this glee club.

It's an exuberant, eclectic bunch. He auditions with _Piano Man_ and is met with enthusiastic applause. He receives offered high fives from several of the boys and is given eyes from several of the girls. A girl who introduces herself as Rachel Berry leans forward in her seat with an over big smile to say, "We should sing together sometime." Blaine replied with a polite thanks, because he is not sure if that is a genuine offer or if he is being hit on. Rachel Berry seems very enthusiastic.

It's not the Warblers, but by the end of practice, Blaine definitely thinks he could make this work for him.

…

Blaine goes through the next day of school, again without a whisper, rumor, or insult-laced shove implying anything gossip-like was going around about him. The only notable thing is Kurt not only being on time to French class but early. In his earliness, he had chosen sitting far away from Blaine's front row desk. Maybe it's a sign to leave sleeping dogs to their lying. But yesterday, three run-ins with Kurt seemed like sign. Really, it all left Blaine confused.

But no rumors were about. Surely there had been enough for them to spread like wildfire like they were wont to do in high school.

He can't help be curious about why not. Why no rumors. It's not even that Kurt has to malicious to spread them. He could just like to talk. So when he's heard before fifth period and sixth, and he sees Kurt sitting in the hallway outside of the guidance office, Blaine takes a detour.

Kurt's playing Angry Birds on his phone.

"What're _you_ doing here?" Kurt when he notices Blaine standing next to him.

"I'm walking between classes. What're you doing here?"

Kurt pulls back the slingshot and releases a bird on his screen. "Whenever I get a detention I get a second punishment where I have to talk Pillsbury about anger management or my feelings or some shit like that."

"Detention on the second day?"

"Detention on the first day. Just talking about it on the second."

"Oh."

Kurt rolls his eyes exaggerated, and focuses back on his phone.

Blaine shifts weight between his feet, a balancing act that belongs to more than just his body. "Um, thank you, by the way, for not saying anything about _that_ _moment_ yesterday."

"Well," Kurt barely glances up at him, but it's more than he had been giving Blaine. "That would've been rather hypocritical of me."

It hits Blaine like a sledge hammer.

"Don't act so f-ing surprised," Kurt says, almost bored, attention all back to his game.


	2. Intrigue

**Chapter 2**

It's a favor Blaine's performing for his mom, taking her car to get an oil change on his weekend so she doesn't have to bother with it. She gives him the address of her regular garage, and Blaine heads over in the early afternoon. It was all normal, until he rings the bell on front counter, and none other than Kurt Hummel appears.

The very Kurt Hummel who's made deliberately sure not to sit anywhere near him in French II, their only shared class. The very Kurt Hummel who hasn't graced Blaine with word since the second day of school now two weeks past. Though that might be a blessing, for as far as Blaine can tell, Kurt doesn't have many nice words to grace people with.

Kurt Hummel, done up in coveralls and sneering when he recognizes who Blaine in. .

Blaine glances up at a sign on the wall, letting the information that passed through his head so fast before he hadn't considered it possible. "_Hummel _Tire and Lube."

In a forced customer service voice, Kurt says, "How can I help you, bowtie?"

Blaine's not even wearing a bowtie today, but he doubts Kurt knows his real name. "Oil change, um, my mom's car."

"Lucky for you lunchtime is always slow, so I can get you right in. Pull your car around the side and into deck number four –"

Behind Kurt, the glass-fronted door – to what Blaine's supposed was an office – opened and a man in a baseball cap stuck his head out.

"Kurt, I told you to get me if any customers showed up."

Not turning, Kurt responds, annoyed. "It's just an oil change, Dad. I can handle it."

"It's not a matter of _if_ you can handle it."

Raising his eyes exasperatedly towards the ceiling, Kurt says, "It's your lunch break." It's clear to Blaine there are many pieces to this argument he's not privy to.

"Kurt…"

Kurt turns around, and the father and son communicate silently with their eyes. Finally, Kurt's dad jerks his head to the side, indicating inside of his office. Kurt scoff-sighs.

"We'll be right back," Kurt's dad says to Blaine, and slips back into the office. Kurt turns around, glaring more than usual.

"You can wait there," Kurt says in a way that is clearly an order and not an accommodation, pointing to a row of plastic chairs against the side of the office wall.

Blaine takes the seat and starts thumbing through a car magazine from a stack on one of the chairs. What did he just walk into? He's half tempted to sneak out now and find the nearest Jiffy Lube. Or surely there's an online tutorial for oil changes? A summer spent rebuilding a car with his dad, and yet Blaine never learned this aspect of car maintenance.

Then he hears, or overhears it, the voices in the office. The door must be ajar.

"... it's not your job to run the garage," says the low, grumble-y voice of Kurt's father. "And it's not your job to look after me."

"I don't think taking charge on an oil change counts as running the garage," Kurt snarky voice replies.

"Kurt," says the father, warningly.

A short silence, and Kurt speaks again, "It is my job to look after you. Who else will?"

"As much as you think otherwise, Kurt, you're still just a kid."

"And I'd really not like to be an orphan."

There's a long quietness, and Blaine shouldn't be witnessing this personal moment, but his ears strain anyway to hear what's going on. There's a gruff of quieter voices and indistinguishable words, a more intimate conversation.

The voices start grow loud again, and Blaine hears snippets.

Kurt: "… can you just trust me a little bit?"

His father: "You know it's not… don't need to shoulder…"

A car screeches outside on the road, followed by a trail of honking, hiding all conversation from Blaine for a moment.

"I just want you to be okay," Kurt says.

His father: "Don't you think I want the same for you?"

Blaine feels his throat tighten up. He's never shared such an open moment with his own dad.

"Just take a longer break," Kurt implores, "For me?"

Kurt's dad grumbles, but it must be in agreement, for the conversation has ended. Blaine hears footsteps approaching – Kurt must be wearing boots again. Then the footsteps pause still inside the door, maybe in pause as Kurt notices the door is open.

Blaine raises the magazine higher to cover his face. Kurt comes out, stops, standing tall in front of him.

"How much of that did you eavesdrop?"

"I wasn't eavesdropping. I was just reading this magazine here."

"It's upside down," Kurt says dryly.

Blaine dropped his eyes fast to the magazine in his hands. It wasn't upside down. Kurt had just tested him and Blaine had failed.

"Well, then," Kurt says, flicking up an eyebrow. "Don't go saying anything about this around school."

Unusually charged up, Blaine snarks in return. "What would I say that could be that damaging. That you do other things with your life than walking around with a glare on your face and talking condescendingly to people in French."

"Whatever," Kurt says, but he seems relieved by Blaine's response. "Let's go change your goddamn oil." He starts to walk away.

Blaine calls after him: "But I don't know why you are so embarrassed. I would love to have a relationship with my father like that."

"Shut up about shit you know nothing about."

"It was a compliment."

"I don't care what it was. I told you to shut up."

"That's not really a way to talk to a paying customer, is it?"

"Would you shut up, please?" replied Kurt, complete with a mock curtsey. Blaine's never heard a _please_ before that's sounded so much like a _fuck you._

Kurt had Blaine pull his car into one of the garage docks as ordered earlier and ordered again. This kid sure had some customer service charm. Instead of going back to the waiting chairs, Blaine perches himself on the edge of a moderately clean work desk. It was a good decision not to wear pastel colored pants today.

"You don't have to stay," says Kurt, who is edging just on this side of polite, probably because his father staying on break depends on it.

"I find it interesting to watch. I know a thing or two about cars."

Kurt throws him a 'bitch, please,' look, and sorts through a tool box. "Well, don't stare at my ass again."

Blaine feels a bit embarrassed. Getting caught staring at anyone's derriere didn't exactly fit into his proper young gentlemen mentality. But Kurt was using this knowledge as a weapon, and Blaine wasn't going to show even the most minor of wounds.

"I promise to keep my eyes to themselves," he says as charmingly as that ridiculous phrase could be said.

Kurt fiddles with the ratchet in his hand, body only half facing Blaine. "You know that was your chance to deny everything."

"Why would I do that?" Blaine challenges, though lightly.

"We don't exactly go to the most gay-friendly school or live in the most gay-friendly town in America." Kurt continues to twist the ratchet, eyes on it like he's solving a rubix cube.

Blaine blinks, heavy, holding back the surge of emotion. "I'm well aware of that," he says, though Kurt doesn't seem to catch the flatness in his voice.

Kurt glances Blaine once-over. "I'm surprised that you haven't been destroyed yet, with the clothes you wear... the bright colors, the patterns." He snorts. "The bowties."

"Bowties are in," Blaine protests.

"Not in high school in Lima," Kurt says. "Not ever."

Blaine's brow furrows of its own accord, knowing there was more there, but not sure where, or how to reach it, or if he wanted to. But he's here, and he doesn't have to be, and he's talking the Kurt, instigating it.

Sure, Kurt's gay. Blaine finds him somewhat attractive and somewhat intriguing. (Whether Blaine finds him appealing is another issue, and the jury's still out.) And it seems fate or coincidence or whatever else is jamming them together. It doesn't mean they will, or have to be, or Blaine even wants to be friends or allies or whatever else they could possibly be. (He's not going there in his thoughts right now. One inappropriate ass-staring was enough.)

For the rest of the oil change, they spoke no words to each beyond strictly business.

…

But gosh darn it, Blaine was intrigued by Kurt. Because before he just thought Kurt was kind of a jerk, pushing people away and Blaine was fine with staying away. But then Kurt has proved to be more than a jerk, not spreading rumors about Blaine and looking after his dad.

Blaine watches him around school, in the completely non-stalkerish way possible. It's not like he follows Kurt anywhere or seeks him out. No, he just aware of him and pays attention when he's around. In all of the things Blaine observed, one thing was constant: Kurt is always alone.

Like at lunch, if Kurt could be found in the cafeteria or courtyard at all, he was always tucked off by himself in some edge or corner. No one approached him. In fact, there were those who went out of their way to avoid him

One day at lunch, surrounded by his glee mates who don't seem to have any other friends (the jocks and Cheerios occasionally associate with their sort, but are much more leeched onto the social circle that is the gleeks) Blaine asks about Kurt.

He says it like this: "So what's the deal with the guy with the pink hair?" like he doesn't know a thing about Kurt, least of all his name, his place of work, and even his father.

Kurt's clearly visible from where they sit. He's at round lunch table all by himself, earbuds plugged in, picking the crust off a sandwich that must have come from home. Several at Blaine's table glance over at Kurt, and others share knowing glances with each other.

In full Irish lilt, Rory breaks the silence to say, "He's kind of scary." Seeing as Rory is as new as Blaine to this school, it wasn't that helpful.

"But isn't it true he was in juvie one time?" Finn asks of the group.

Puck jumps in to say, "I heard he drove a car through the front of convenience store and tried to drive away with the ATM."

Quinn pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs in irritation. "No, Puck, that was you."

"I heard he lit someone on fire?" Tina says, glancing around the group to learn what they know.

"No, no, he broke someone's arm, the end of freshman year," Artie amends.

The group spends the next several minutes comparing stories and overheard rumors about one pink-haired Kurt Hummel, coming to no conclusion. Throughout the rubble, Mike nudges Blaine to get his attention, and tells him in an undertone, "I think the point here is that he's bad news."

Ditzy as ever, Brittany announces into the air as she twirls her hair, "We can always ask the internet."

The group silences. Santana speaks up as interpreter. "Weasel ben Israel's blog."

Nearly everyone at the table makes a disgusted face.

"Who's… Weasel ben Israel?" Blaine asks tentatively.

Rachel speaks up for everyone at the table, "His real name's Jacob ben Israel, but he is indeed a pervy little weasel who posts everyone's personal business on his blog."

"You've probably seen him around," Santana says, leaning back in her chair. "Little Jewfro running around with a camera."

The description's very precise, and instantly Blaine comes aware of such a classmate he's noticed in his peripheral of his attention as his focus has been on getting integrated into a new school and Kurt. Blaine might know where to go, now, to find what he longs to know.

…

Jacob's blog is easy enough to find with a little googling, given all the information Blaine has on the kid – like his name, and hometown, and high school. The kid seems awfully proud of his website, making no attempts to remain anonymous. He's also, Blaine learns with a first perusal of the feed, a bit obsessed with the glee club and even more Rachel Berry. Poor girl.

Jacob's blog has an internal search bar, and Blaine types in Kurt's name. The first result is titled "Kurt Hummel: the Actual Antichrist?" and is dated for sometime over the summer. (This makes Blaine suspect that Jacob was running desperate for ideas over summer break.) Blaine pursues this article to see if it contains any relevant information. It doesn't.

A lot of the hits for 'Kurt Hummel' received are tertiary, him mentioned in passing in blog posts about other things. About two-third down the first page Blaine finds a post entitled "Actual Crimes Committed by Kurt Hummel" that tempts to be promising, although Jacob ben Israel has been proving to be a sensationalist headline writer.

The blog post is in list format, the first bullet point reading "destruction of property" accompanied by a video link. Blaine clicks the play arrow to get a sixteen second clip of shaky cam footage starring Kurt stalking towards Jacob (invisible, holding the camera, voice heard) in the McKinley hallways.

"Hey, what are you –," sqawks Jacob's voice as Kurt's hand reaches out, covering the lens. Next thing there is a crash. The video cuts off. It's obvious that the camera got slammed to the floor.

The next several bullet points were more comedic, disparaging fairs about Kurt's appearance, his clothes, his assumed sexuality. The bottom bullet is where it gets interesting, reading, "And not to forget Hummel's first known foray into the criminal lifestyle, assault and battery." _Assault and battery_ are hyperlinked.

Blaine clicks the link and is led through to a post dated a few years back.

"Dear readers, remember Kurt Hummel? Probably not, because he's less than zero on the McKinley High scale of importance. But maybe you're familiar with none other than the shrimpy, effeminate freshman who has been lurking around the hallways, being locker slammed out of the way? That's Kurt Hummel.

So you're probably wondering, what is so important about this nobody? Recall Ted Cranson's mysterious hand injury, where he showed up Monday with no less than four finger splints on his right hand. Ted's current story is that he broke his fingers catching a falling tree over his head. However, my secret sources indicate that none other than dweepy, gay-ish Kurt Hummel is the responsible perpetrator of this. More details as this story develops.

But what we can take from this, is that only someone truly sadistic, criminal, and – dare I say it – death-seeking, would enact such violence on our quarterback such months before he was to go to college on a football scholarship."

Blaine searches around the blog site for the "more details" Jacob had promised, but to no avail. It seems like his glee friends rumors of broken arms and fire lighting were a bit exaggerated, but broken fingers is nothing small. Maybe it was best Blaine took this as a sign and kept his distance. He wasn't looking to repeat being the victim of physical violence.

…

Next morning, Mercedes sidles up to Blaine while he's still busy in his locker.

"Blaine, can I talk to you?" she asks, binder clutched tight to her chest, sounding more meek than Blaine had ever witnessed her.

"Sure, what's up?"

"In the choir room," she says, an added precaution, and honestly it was a bit loud to talk in a pre-homeroom morning hallway. She leans in. "It's about Kurt."

It's an instant hook for Blaine, even though he would have went with Mercedes without further details.

In the choir room, Mercedes paces the front of the room as Blaine settles into a chair in the first row.

"You know," she says, pausing in front of the white board, "Freshman year, Kurt and I were friends. We weren't super close, but we got along, went to the mall a few times, talked about clothes… He dressed differently back then. He was completely different back then." She drops her head. Blaine scoots forward in his chair, sitting on the edge. He waits, knowing Mercedes will continue in her own time.

"We drifted apart later in the year. My fault. I was trying out all these different clubs, trying to my find my place here. That was before glee. I still talked to him in class…" She shrugs.

"I don't know why you're telling me all this," Blaine says, slowly and carefully, although he sort of does know.

She plops her binder down on the closed piano top, and it resounds in the empty room. "No one asks about Kurt. Everyone has their stories, the rumors, the gossip. But you asked, so I thought I'd give you a more complete answer than the one you were getting yesterday… no one remembers that Kurt Hummel. The one I was friends with freshman year. He was on nobody's radar until he came back sophomore year different."

"Different how?" Blaine asks.

Mercedes waves a hand and then drops it. "How you've seen him. Taller, meaner, surrounded by rumors. Not the Kurt I had been friends with." She shrugs again, as if it's heavy.

"Do you have any idea what happened… to make him change?"

"I told you, we drifted apart. There are a lot of rumors. I don't know which are true. Maybe the only one that does is Kurt. But there is more to him than those rumors, and at least someone should know that."

* * *

Feedback is love and inspires faster writing, which means faster posting!


	3. Less Than, More Than

"Guess who's going to be the opening performers for this week's pep rally?" Mr. Schue prompted the glee club. "None other than New Directions!"

There were cheers about the choir room, cheers that thrummed through Blaine's head well after practice. He had been given his first solo of the year for the performance. It was just the chorus, and he wasn't the only member of glee club getting a solo during their song, but he was still pleased. While he had come in with a strong and positive mindset, Blaine had to cop to how fearful he had been starting at McKinley. But now, so quickly after the turn of the school year, Blaine had found a place that accepted and celebrated him: glee club.

Lost in his own head, for the second time in his life, Blaine runs _literally_ into Kurt Hummel again.

"How many times do I have to tell you to watch where you're going, bowtie?" Kurt snaps instantly.

Blaine crouches down to help Kurt collect the books that had been splayed across the floor at their collision.

"You're here late," Blaine comments, all polite small talk, as he hands over a textbook. Kurt's scrambling to collect his loose papers.

"Detention. Apparently telling a facility member to fuck off is frowned upon in this school."

"Oh," Blaine says, a little shocked at his bluntness.

"Whatever," Kurt pulls all his books into his arms and stands, heading away without a thank you or any other gesture. Blaine stands and starts on his way too.

Kurt pauses and looks over his shoulder. "You following me, bowtie?"

Blaine gestures down the hall. "This is the way to the parking lot."

Kurt growls deep in his throat, turns front sharply, and keeps walking, but faster now. Blaine takes his time, not rushing to catch up. He catches up anyway, however, where Kurt stands on the front stoop of the school building.

"Waiting for your ride?" Blaine asks conversationally.

"Walking is as good as any."

"It's about to rain." Blaine points at the overcast sky.

"I don't melt," Kurt retorts blandly.

Blaine shifts the weight between his feet. "I could give you a ride," he offers. "I have my Mom's car today…"

Kurt gives him a disparaging look, face squinted in a distasteful glower. "Fuck off." With that, Kurt steps off the stoop and starts stomping off across the parking lot.

Blaine raises his hands in defense although Kurt's well away. Blaine sets off toward where he was parked. It's already drizzling when he steps off the stoop, and turns into a steady batter by the time he gets in his car. It's only getting heavier.

He pulls out of the parking lot. Not a block down the road, he spots Kurt walking down the sidewalk, books clutched tight to his chest and shoulders hunched against the rain.

Glutton for punishment he is, Blaine pulls over his car right next to Kurt and rolls down the window.

"Sure you don't want a ride?" Blaine asks carefully, a wincing smile on his face.

Kurt side-eyes him for a moment, but the rain falls faster than Kurt's resolve. He visibly sighs, then opens the passenger door and slides in.

"Where to?" Blaine asks.

"You remember where the shop is?"

Blaine nods and directs his car back onto the road.

Kurt's raking his wet hair off his face when he asks, "Why are you doing this? I could a serial killer for all you know."

"Why'd you take up the offer? I could be a serial killer for all _you_ know," Blaine retorts cheerily.

Kurt snorts. "Figures. Knew you were hiding something behind all that hair gel."

"Just uncontrollable curls."

"T M I," Kurt says, and shifts himself to stare out his window exclusively.

Blaine makes the turn from Rodford onto Fifth.

"Blaine…" It might have been the first time Kurt had ever said his proper name. Blaine shifts his hold on the steering wheel in anticipation. "Really, why are you doing this?"

Blaine licks his lips, a thoughtful pause before answering. "Can't someone do something nice without a reason?"

Kurt snorts again, but this time different, more cynical. "No."

Blaine throws him a questioning look.

"At the very least, people pull the good Samaritan act to feel better about themselves."

He believes he would have made this same offer to quite a few of his classmates, anyone in glee at least. But for Kurt Hummel, who is not is friend, has a semi-certifiable record of breaking enemy fingers, who already turned down the offer once… but has Mercedes sympathy and Blaine's curiosity.

Blaine knows very well why he's doing this. He chooses his next words carefully. "Maybe I'm interested in seeing the man behind the curtain."

"A _Wizard of Oz _reference," Kurt says, "You really are gay."

"Never denied it."

"Yeah, well, no one believed me when I did."

Blaine brakes at a stoplight. That was it, what Kurt said, a snippet of something more, of his past.

Blaine looks direct over at Kurt like he had been avoiding, keeping his eyes glued on the road. "So you admit there is more to you."

"There's more to everyone, Blaine," Kurt says snidely. "I mean, come on. Look at you."

"Look at me?"

The light turns green and Blaine eases back onto the gas pedal.

"The bowtie and the parted hair and all the manners…" Kurt leans across the space between them and whispers low and baiting, "What's that hiding?"

Blaine coughs, deliberately taking time to clear his throat. This wasn't supposed to be about unraveling him.

Kurt leans back in his seat. "Everyone has something behind the curtain, bowtie, including you. So if you're doing all this because you think you can solve or fix me, you can go screw yourself."

"I never meant," Blaine tries to correct, to explain, but he can't help but think he a little guilty of Kurt's accusation.

Kurt's not done talking. He raises his voice to cut Blaine off. "I'm not a puzzle and I'm not a broken vase. I'm a person, take me or leave me."

Just then, Blaine pulls into the parking lot outside of the garage. Kurt pushes open the door and gets out quickly, slamming it loudly behind himself. Blaine can only gape, the rain coming down even harder.

…

"Are you okay, Blaine, you look a little pale." His mom instantly presses her hand to his forehead. He shrugs away.

"Just a long day at school."

This doesn't ease his mother's worries, but amplifies them. "Are… are there any problems with your classmates?" she asks with cautious words.

"No, mom, all the kids at the playground were nice to me."

"There is no need to take that tone, Blaine Devon."

Blaine runs a hand over his forehead. "It was just a really long day. I need to get started on my homework." He kisses his mother on the cheek in apology and excuses himself to his bedroom, but doesn't get started on his homework. Rather, he starts on a note.

It pours out surprisingly easy:

_I want to take a chance to apologize, and in a note because I don't really think you want me to talk to you anymore. I'm sorry I offended you and I'm sorry that I crossed any boundaries. You are completely right. You are a person, not a project. I should have never treated you less than that. My only excuse is that coming back to a public school has been a challenge for me considering my previous, not-so-pleasant experiences at my first high school. I find when I think on it, it was easier to focus on you than it was to focus on me in these first few weeks. From now on, I will give you your space and your privacy._

He reads it over and over, thinking of tweaks and scraping them. Wondering if he needed to explain more, his past, but turning that decision over. He wants this to be an apology, not a series of excuse-making. Ultimately, all he does is finish his note off as his signature.

The next day he consults a list housed in the office to learn Kurt's locker number and slips his note in through one of the slates.

…

There he is, Kurt Hummel in the front row of the bleachers, legs spread and with a slouched posture. Blaine barely caught sight of hide or hair of Kurt Hummel ever since the car ride, even though that was Monday and now it was Friday. He had skipped out of every French class this week at the least.

Now, Kurt's taking up space in a careless-appearing way, like he's wanting to be seen. It was so easy to make eye contact with him, and wasn't that a key to great performing. To make it like you are actually singing to someone in the audience?

The music starts, and Blaine's still looking right at Kurt. Kurt looks up from picking at his nails to the stage, right to Blaine staring.

Blaine forced to look away when the choreography demands him to move, the group harmonizing the opening together. Then at the turn of the verse to chorus, Blaine gets his solo. He plants his feet center stage front and glances over to find Kurt still slouched and staring.

Their eyes catch. Blaine takes a breath in time, waiting for the music to catch up with the quick beating of his heart. When it does, he begins to sing – loud, clear, melodic. He loves the feelings, physical and emotional, that flow through him when he gets to sing like this. It's simultaneously u unadulterated and for a crowd.

While he rolls through his lyrics, Blaine tries to glance away from Kurt. He manages to, for a few seconds, focusing here or there or elsewhere in the audience. But his gaze continually slung shot back to Kurt. As far as Blaine could tell, Kurt hadn't looked away from him either. Kurt was always looking back when Blaine was.

With his solo finished, Blaine has to unglue his feet from the stage to keep moving, switching out for another to take his place to sing. He's forced to look away from Kurt. When the song ends, Blaine gets in his pose, finally allowed to look for Kurt again. However, Kurt's spot in the bleachers is now empty.

They receive moderate applause, and Blaine's too distracted to truly gage it. He receives plenty of pats on the back, half-hugs, and high fives, which he receives and returns automatically.

"You were awesome, dude," said Puck, or Mike, or Finn. Blaine's not paying enough attention to be sure.

…

No one warned Blaine about the slushies. He learned later from Tina that was a normal thing that happened around their school, as an act of keeping the order of popularity. Nearly everyone in the glee club had been slushied, although this might have been the first slushie of the school year. The performance at the pep rally must have put the glee club back on the worse side of the jock's radar.

Blaine's first encounter with a slushy went like this:

He's chatting in the hallway with Tina between classes. A letter jacketed jock is lurking done the hall with a double gulp-sized slushy in hand doesn't even register in Blaine's mind. Tina notices, though, her eyes going wide.

"Oh man, I hoped that died last year."

"What?" Blaine asks, looking around for some sort of clue as to what is going on.

Tina grips his arm, already wincing, "It's too late to run. Brace for impact."

Just then, who other than Kurt Hummel swoops down the hall in the opposite direction, students moving out of his way in almost equal amounts to the jock with the slushy. As he passes said jock, his arm slashes out ninja quick and he slaps the bottom of the slushy cup. The bright red slushy hits the jocks under the chin and splashes all down his front, puddling on the floor. There are gasps and muffled titters all around.

"What the hell!" yells the jock at Kurt as Kurt continues on his way without the slightest hesitance in his step.

Kurt turns on his heel to swiftly reply, "Oops, I slipped," with a shrug before spinning front-forward again, and sauntering down the hall.

…

Blaine's waiting for French class to start, at his desk early. His previous class was let out a few minutes before the bell, and he made good time. He doesn't have any glee friends in this class, so he attends to himself as there is a flurry of activity amongst much of the rest of the already class. When someone takes the seat next to him, he doesn't notice right away.

A throat clears. Blaine looks after the sound to find Kurt, pierced eyebrow raised pose-like.

"Hey," Blaine says unsure.

"Hey," Kurt responds, flicking at a lose strand of pink hair over his forehead. "Nice song."

"Thanks…"

"You branded yourself, though. No one knew that you were a part of the geekiest club at McKinley until the prep rally. You're going to have dodge the rest of the slushies yourself.

Blaine lets out a chuckle even though that compliment also carried some insults. "So… can I ask why you stopped the first one for me?"

Kurt bites the tip of his tongue and his eyes flicks in contemplation as he realizes that he did indeed imply his slushy-actions had been for Blaine. "Well, let's just say you did me a solid with the ride and I did you a solid in return."

"Even though you were mad at me?" Blaine asks, head cocked.

The corner of Kurt's mouth tinges up. He looks more attractive than Blaine ever seen him. It's a not a thought that is so scary to Blaine right now.

"Apology accepted," Kurt says.

Blaine almost sputters but regains himself before he does. "Really?"

"Most people don't even try to apologize, just make excuses for their behavior. But you actually meant it," Kurt says. "I figured I could forgive you for _thinking_ too much about me."

"Oh, well, thank you," Blaine says, not sure what it is appropriate to say after an apology being accepted.

"And I figured I might not have been _completely_ in the right. I wasn't quite treating you like a person either."

"What were you treating me like?" Blaine asked.

Kurt rolls his head back before answering, "An obstacle."

They didn't get to say anymore, for then Mrs. Boggart bangs on the front desk to gain the class's attention.

* * *

Aki - I felt like this chapter was a little rougher, writing-wise, but ultimately, I think it works. Anyway, a note from me about updating. I have written a few chapters in advance and I hope to update at least once a week. For the chapters I have not written, I do have a plan. So hopefully I will be able to keep up with that pace.


	4. Pillow Talk

**Chapter 4**

Blaine couldn't say that he and Kurt were now friends, after what happened, but the level of animosity Kurt had held towards him had certainly dropped off. Kurt had even taken to sitting next to Blaine fairly regularly in French, as Blaine was, in Kurt's words, "the least insufferable person in this class."

Blaine's content to let things slide along the way they were going. Easy, non-confrontational, and minimal. No depth and no interaction more than the school schedule demands. But Blaine had promised respect and privacy, so he swore himself to no more prying questions or prying eyes. He could live with that amicability.

He lets it go this way for a week or two, but then he spies Kurt sitting in the courtyard on one of the large cement steps in a swatch of sunlight, alone like always. His eyes are closed, earbuds in. He's mouthing silently along to words Blaine can't understand.

Moved by boldness, Blaine starts toward Kurt rather than where the Glee club is stuffed around a table on the opposite side of the courtyard.

He tentatively sits an arm's length away from Kurt and peeps up a small "hey." He is unheard.

Blaine reaches out and gently plucks one of the earbuds out of Kurt's ear. Kurt jerks in an instinctive reaction, but calms when he identifies Blaine as the perpetrator. Blaine's gives an awkward, apologetic grin as Kurt's expression resolves into unimpressed.

"You want something?" Kurt asks, Blaine getting the impression he was the only person in school who could have performed such an invasion of Kurt's space and not have gotten punched for it.

He had just aimed to get Kurt's attention, but he could make out a familiar tune buzzing out from the exposed earbud, and what he hears is not at all what he expects.

"You're listening to _Wicked_?" Blaine asks with disbelief.

Kurt fumbles with his iPod, pausing the song, shutting off the sound.

"What did you expect — Finnish death metal?" Kurt shoots back.

Blaine shrugs a shoulder, because sorta. "Not musical theater."

"I'm not a box," Kurt says, puffing up with importance. "There are more than four sides to me."

Blaine can literally feel his eyebrows squinting down over his eyes as he contemplates what was just said. "A box has six sides."

Kurt's self-righteousness deflates. "What?" he asks, blunt.

"You said you weren't a box and there were more than four sides to you… but a box has six sides because it's three-dimensional."

Over the course of Blaine's statement, Kurt's enter confident demeanor shrunk away. "Oh my god," he says, putting a hand over his mouth.

"I'm sure you meant square…" Blaine says in an attempt to comfort him.

"You don't understand," Kurt says. "I'm been saying that for years. _Years._ How many people have I sounded like an idiot to?"

"If I was the first person to correct you, I was probably the first person to notice,  
Blaine starts to say, but then, "Kurt, are you blushing?"

Kurt immediately hides his face in his hands.

"Are you embarrassed about being embarrassed?" Blaine asks incredulously.

Kurt shakes his hidden head 'no' but squeak-whispers out, "has anyone noticed?"

Blaine takes a few glances around the courtyard and can fairly confidently say that they are being completely ignored.

A few moments later, Kurt resurfaces, only the barest pink in the face, like he had been touched with sunburn. Blaine has to think with skin that pale, sunburn is probably something that happens to Kurt a lot. Then Blaine has to remind himself to not think in so much detail about Kurt's skin.

Kurt glares around the courtyard, maybe searching for any observer Blaine missed. Satisfied, he tilts his head back to Blaine.

"Really, did you want something?" he says coolly.

"You don't have to be embarrassed in front of me, okay?" Blaine says, not really answering Kurt's question. "I swear, I won't tell anyone you sing along to _Wicked_ and think boxes have four sides. In fact, I think it's kind of adorable."

Blaine wants to punch himself. How in the hell did he let _that_ slip.

Kurt's quiet for a moment before responding. "I don't want to be adorable." He puts his stray earbud back in. "Adorable gets you…" He finishes off with a muttered, "tossed into dumpsters."

Blaine sits there, ignored, as Kurt restarts his music and focuses on his lunch with an unrealistic amount of attention.

He lets this go for a minute, then two, before tapping Kurt on the arm. To Kurt's credit, he pauses his music, if not taking out his earbuds.

"What I'm here for is that… I thought that you might want so company. You're always alone at lunch…" He purses his lips, forcing himself to say no more.

Kurt blinks slowly. "I've done the alone thing for a long time now, bowtie. I think I can handle another lunch period."

"But…" Blaine shrugs a single shoulder. "You don't need to, today, if you don't want to."

Again, Kurt's quiet for a while before he responds. "If you decide to sit there and eat your lunch… I won't move from where I'm already sitting and eating my lunch."

Blaine grins. "That's the most roundabout way of saying 'why not' that I've ever heard."

Kurt's eyes narrow. "I never said we were going to converse," he says, before turning his music back on.

…

"Can I ask you something?"

"You can do whatever the hell you want. Doesn't mean I'll answer."

"Can you ever answer a yes-no question with yes or no?"

Kurt's eyes flash, bright and teasing. "Yes."

Blaine snorts at the answer, ducks his head, and before asking, "What did you mean when you called me an obstacle."

Kurt picks at the skin of apple with his thumb nail. Another shared lunchtime, two days running, back to back. This time Kurt didn't have his iPod plugged in his ears. ("Forgot to charge it" is Kurt's explanation.)

"I told you I was wrong to think of you like that," Kurt says

"I know. But what does it _mean_?"

Kurt's jaw tenses and Blaine's now familiar enough to know this is a 'thinking before you speak' gesture of Kurt's. Blaine busies himself with his own bag lunch as he waits for Kurt to speak. It's best not to press, he learns. A question like that is one Blaine can rarely risk, but things have been going so smoothly, and he dares now.

"It means exactly what the word _obstacle_ means. You were just another thing in the way, like everyone else in this town. The idiot teachers in this school that don't prepare you for college or life. The assholes here that call themselves students. Homophobes everywhere."

"And where did I fit into all of that?"

"Meddling do-gooder, one of the Miss Pillsburys of the world."

"Meddling do-gooder?" Blaine questions. "You sound like a Scooby-Doo villain."

Kurt whacks Blaine on the shoulder, but it's all playful. Blaine can swear that his skin at the contact point is tingling well later, but when he undresses that evening, there was no visible mark left behind.

…

"So what's the deal with you and Hummel?" asks Santana, loudly, in front of everyone (read: New Directions) when Mr. Schue's running late (read: so far absent) from glee practice.

"Excuse me?" Blaine says, because his mother raised him to be a gentleman after all.

"You do talk to him a lot," Tina says. "Like, more than anyone else in this school talks to him."

"Yo," Artie agrees.

Blaine glances Mercedes' way, where she is tight-mouthed and looks uncomfortable.

"Don't think we don't notice who you each lunch with when you don't eat it with us," Santana says, flicking her long ponytail over her shoulder.

"It's because he's hot for him," says Puck from the top row. Everyone turns to stare at him. "What? It's obvious."

Santana looks viciously happy with this turn of events sparked up her comments.

"Is this true, Blaine?" Rachel asks. "Because I can truly say that I feel that Kurt Hummel will be nothing but a drain on your talents, which should be focused on Sectionals."

"There is nothing happening between me and Kurt," Blaine says diplomatically.

"But you want it to be," Puck pipes up, again to everyone's stares.

Blaine's never been more thankfully for Mr. Schue's arrival and their weekly themed lesson.

...

It stings, which Blaine hadn't expected. Why would a mixture of ice, sugar, food coloring sting so much?

In that moment, there's nothing better than reaching the relief of the bathroom sink and being able to flush the remaining slushy out of his eyes. But that still leaves his hair, his clothes, every else on his body, which is now sticky, wet, and cold.

"Here," a voice states, and Blaine starts until his brain catches up, recognizing it. Kurt's standing next to him, holding out a dry towel. "I stole it from the locker room. It's clean."

Blaine takes it with a quiet thanks. He rubs it over his face first, then his hair. He hears Kurt snort.

"You weren't lying about the uncontrollable curls."

Blaine looks at himself in the mirror, face tinged artificial red and hair damp and curling in some areas and completely frizzed in others. He hasn't had a chance to pat dry the rest of him. A puddle is forming on the floor at his feet.

He plucks at the shirt sticking to his stomach. "This isn't coming out, is it?"

"Not without some Tide," Kurt says, leaning against the far sink, well away from where he could get stained by accidental interaction with Blaine.

"I can't go through the rest of the day like this," Blaine says, kind of desperately.

"Do you have any spare clothes with you at school?"

"No. Why would I?"

"I don't know." Kurt crosses his arms. "Gym cloths... something in your car."

"I didn't drive to school today," Blaine says, then the meaning of this hits him. His mom is picking up today. His mom would see him like this, demand explanation. There was no way to hide this.

Blaine rings his finger through his already messy hair. "God, my mom is going to freak out."

"Hates stains?" Kurt guesses, nose wrinkled.

Blaine looks up at his reflection in the mirror rather than directly at Kurt. "She'll think its bullying."

Kurt shrugs. "It kind of is."

"Yeah, but this is just glee club stuff. She'll just think it's directed particularly at me, for being gay. She'll think this school isn't safe."

Kurt scoffs, sounding loud in the bathroom that is empty except for the two of them. "It isn't."

"Well, getting three cherry slushies dumped on me is a lot safer than what happened at my old school."

Kurt's quiet for a moment. "Look, I have a car here today. I could drive you to your house so you can get a change of clothes. You'll miss a class or two, but you're already doing that. Hell, might as well skip the rest of the day."

"You would do that for me?" Blaine's dumbfounded, and that's clear in his expression and his tone.

Kurt shrugs a single shoulder as he's leaned back against the empty paper towel dispenser. "Have to pay you back for that ride after all."

"Didn't you do that by deflecting that first slushy?" He wraps the towel around his shoulders like a blanket.

"Well," Kurt tilts his head, considering, "We can see how that backfired, because they came back with triple the force on you because they wouldn't dare do it to me."

Without thinking, Blaine says, "Because they're afraid you'll break their hands?"

A calculating expression darts over Kurt's face.

"…Are you afraid of me, bowtie?"

"No."

"Do you think that's wise?"

Looking Kurt straight in the eyes, Blaine answers, "I haven't decided yet."

Kurt smirks at that reply, more to himself than to Blaine. He contemplates the tile floor for a moment, rubbing his heel against a smudge, before looking back up. "So, you taking me up on the ride or what?"

"My mom works from home. She's either going to see me now, or see me later…" Blaine says, resigned. He can just picture his mother pulling him out of school after this in a gross overreaction, shipping him back to Dalton. Not that he had anything against Dalton, for it was at Dalton where he learned to breathe easy again, learned confidence, learned to accept himself in an accepting environment. Dalton is what Blaine needed last year. It's not what he needed now.

"Come to my house," Blaine hears Kurt say, his words slicing through the cloud of Blaine's predicament hovering over his head.

"Excuse me?"

"You can shower, throw your clothes in the laundry, and I'm sure I have some clothes you can borrow, … temporarily."

"You… why?" Blaine asks, perplexed.

Kurt shifts weight between his feet. "This offer literally expires in the next three seconds. Yes or no?"

"Yes!" Blaine says quickly, before the offer can be rescinded.

…

Kurt drives Blaine to his house in a sleek, black Lincoln Navigator, all while assuring Blaine that the teachers at McKinley were too unobservant to notice them missing.

"Wouldn't want to tarnish you're probably glowing record, after all," Kurt says.

Kurt's house is small and cozy-sized. Going in the front door, briefly glancing around the living area as Kurt leads him up a length of carpeted steps, all Blaine can say is the house looks lived in, and that is only meant as a compliment.

Kurt pushes open a white door in the upstairs hallway. "This is the bathroom… I'll get you some spare clothes…"

Kurt's quiet as he slips down the hall. It's weird for both of them, Blaine being in Kurt's house. Blaine has to wonder if he's the first of Kurt's classmates to ever breach the front door.

To try and make it less awkward, Blaine purposely goes about not trying to overanalyze anything in the bathroom. He refuses to snoop in the medicine cabinet or under the sink. Instead, he starts the water in the shower and strips out of his sticky clothes. He purposely does not think if the soap and shampoo he uses are the same Kurt uses, or try to memorize its smell, or wonder if Kurt smells like this.

Blaine likes the leisure of a long shower, but at someone's charity, he keeps this one short. He turns of the water, climbs out, and begins drying himself with a towel from the rack (much fluffier than the school towel).

There's a knock on the door, and Kurt's clear voice. "I have some clothes if you're done."

Blaine wraps the towel around his hips and opens the door halfway, peaking his neck around it. He doesn't need to stand brazenly and completely in front of Kurt shirtless. And from the pink on Kurt's face when Blaine does open the door, Blaine guesses Kurt is of the same opinion.

Kurt visible gulps as he hands over the clothes: A gray t-shirt with a screen-printed design over the front and a pair of jeans.

"Thanks," Blaine says, taking the clothes carefully yet quickly from Kurt's out held.

"And I can take you slushy clothes and throw them in the washer." Why was everything so tense? Kurt paying him a favor shouldn't be so complicated.

Blaine doesn't express any of this, though. Rather, he quickly collects his pile of dirty clothes, wrapping them in the less wet and less sticky school towel, and hands them off to Kurt.

Kurt's jeans are too long for him, but Blaine just rolls up the cuffs to compensate. The t-shirt's a bit bigger fitting than Blaine would wear, but he thinks it would be a bit big for what Kurt usually wears as well. (Not that Blaine's been paying that much attention, except he's totally been paying that much attention.)

He takes a few extra minutes to dry his hair, but there is nothing to do for the frizzy-ness of it. Blaine steps out into the hall and is immediately greeted with a snort. "Your clothes are in the washing machine now, Borat."

Blaine grimaces. "Can we go back to _bowtie._"

"Like that's an improvement?"

Blaine shrugs. "So… Now we wait…" That was the most awkward thing to say, for it brought with it a resounding silence, so silent it was almost loud. Blaine could hear the rumble of the washing machine, probably located on the floor below.

"You hungry?" Kurt asks.

"We just got out of lunch," Blaine says. Well, he's assuming Kurt got out of lunch. It was one of those days were Kurt had been invisible, until he showed up as the savior in bathroom.

Kurt huffs a sigh through his nose. "Well, let's wait somewhere more comfortable than the hallway."

Blaine expects Kurt's room to be more raw or edgy than the rest of the house. Instead Blaine discovers a tidy room done up in neutral colors. There are framed Broadway posters for _Wicked_, _Chicago,_ and _The Boy From Oz_ on his walls, as well as one of a shirtless Taylor Lautner.

Kurt tugs of the beanie that hung off the back of his head and riffled a hand through his hat hair to fix it. Repressing the urge to ask to touch it, Blaine says instead, "Can I ask you something – Why pink?"

"Because it's a big F you to gender norms," Kurt says with a roll of the eyes.

"And the piercings?"

Kurt's tongue flicks out and over his lip ring unconsciously. "They're just for fun."

Blaine's unable to look away from Kurt's mouth and the lip ring adorning it.

"What?" Kurt interrupts, brow furrowing.

"Nothing," Blaine says, turning himself away, examining the top of Kurt's dresser, the nearest thing to examine. Amongst the modern style collection of things, like the chrome ampersand bookends, was something out of place. A Victorian-patterned, fabric covered box just familiar enough for Blaine to recognize as a jewelry box.

"It was my mother's," Kurt says, coming to stand next to Blaine, his arms wrapped around himself, each hand gripping the opposite elbow.

"Was?"

"She's dead," Kurt says rather bluntly, followed quickly with, "Don't you dare say you're fucking sorry. I can't stand it when people say that."

"Okay," Blaine says quietly, "I won't say it."

After a pause, Kurt tsks and shoulders him. "But you're thinking it, aren't you, you asshole."

The washer finishes its cycle and Kurt goes down stairs to move Blaine's clothes over to the dryer. As he does, Blaine sits tentatively down on the edge of Kurt's bed.

"Making yourself comfortable, I see."

Blaine immediately pops up to his feet.

Kurt slams his bedroom door behind himself. "Oh, sit down, bowtie. It was a joke."

Kurt rounds the bed and lies down on the other side, stretching himself out over the covers. Blaine stares down at him. Kurt rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes.

"Christ, this is weird. I can't believe _you_, of all people, is in my room."

"Me, of all people?" Blaine questions.

Kurt answers, but not the question Blaine asked. "It will take at least thirty minutes for your clothes to dry. Get comfy."

Blaine sits back down on the bed, but then dares to go farther, lying down himself, turning on his side to face Kurt.

Kurt's still lying on his back, but he turns his head to peer at Blaine. "What're you doing?"

"Getting comfy," Blaine responds.

Kurt gaps at Blaine momentarily before scoffing. "Shit. You got balls, bowtie."

They lay silently for a while. Kurt closes his eyes like he's napping, but his breathing never grows slow enough for it to be true. Sometime he shifts on the bed into a more comfortable position, coincidently also on his side, and facing Blaine. Their faces are only inches apart.

Blaine clears his throat, and Kurt's eyes blink open. They were so blue, but not just blue. You rarely get to see someone's eyes up close, but when you did, it was always astounding, the layers of color in them.

"So… what should we talk about to pass the time?" Blaine says.

"Not about me. You've already learned too much about me today."

"Sorry for compromising your secret identity."

"Why can't we lay here and relax?" Phrased as a question but clearly a command.

They settle in, Kurt closing his eyes again. Blaine tries, but his eyelids keep drifting open, focusing hard on Kurt's nearby face, examining in detail. Kurt must feel Blaine's stare somehow, because his eyes pop open, first the left than the right. His expression reads inquisitive. For a moment, they stare together.

Kurt presses the side of his face into the pillow. "Stop looking at me like that."

Blaine can't see but feels the spread of his grin. "Like what?"

Kurt grumbles, shifts, buries his face further in the pillow, then peers up carefully through his lashes back at Blaine's face.

"Like _that_," Kurt says again.

"So descriptive," Blaine teases.

"I will kick you out of my house," Kurt threatens, but there's nothing threatening about it.

"You won't," Blaine replies.

Kurt takes an uneven breath. "Blaine…"

"Yes?"

Kurt snorts into his pillow, huffing in a way that could be laughter or sobs. When his face is visible again, though, there are no tears.

"I didn't wake up this morning expecting to have a boy in my bed later today," Kurt says as a joke, and Blaine's sure that's not what he originally had in his mind.

"Don't over think it," Blaine says, because he can see Kurt's gears turning, his body only a fake relaxed.

During Kurt's laughter, his hand landed flat on the space of the mattress between them and it lay there still now.

It's too tempting of a chance for Blaine to overlook, so he slowly slides his free hand up the mattress, like he was afraid to startle a wild animal. His pinkie brushes Kurt's wrist; Kurt blinks at what he must presume is accidental contact. The misconception is quickly correctly as Blaine lightly settles his hand on top of Kurt's.

"Don't over think it," Blaine whispers again as Kurt's chews nervously on his bottom lip. Kurt doesn't pull away, doesn't say a thing, and Blaine watches for discomfort for a full minute before moving again, moving his fingers into the space between Kurt's and curling them under.

A half a minute later, Kurt curls his fingers too, capturing Blaine's. Blaine feels his heart pounding, and butterflies, and fireworks, the whole lot.

Kurt just says to him, with all the attitude in the world, "Don't over think it."

* * *

Aki - This chapter contains the scene that I imagined/dreamed up that made me need to, yearn to, write this fic. And I think it turned out really well. Dare you to guess what scene it is. Basically, I love this chapter, but I admit to full bias. I hope you like it to.


	5. Under the Bleachers

Maybe, the sound of a slamming door brushed their unconsciousness, but it was the deep, frustrated voice starting to say "Kurt, did you skip-" then abruptly ending that woke them.

Kurt's awake and sitting up in bed before Blaine can blink the bleariness out of his eyes. When did they fall asleep? What time was it now?

Kurt's swearing repeatedly under his breath, a collage of _shits_ and _fucks_ with a few other choice adjectives mixed in.

"What's going on?" Blaine asks. He remembers a voice, not his or Kurt's, but his mind is still half-out of it from the swift wake up call.

"My dad just walked in on us...," he trails off, not exactly finding the word to describe what they were doing. Kurt scowls at the wall, not looking at Blaine. Like this is Blaine's fault. He checks the time. "And it's only two, so he knows we were playing hookie... must've come home early..."

"I thought you said we wouldn't get caught?" Blaine says, a little anxious now.

"I said the teachers wouldn't notice we were missing. Observant parents are another issue. On the upside, your clothes are dry by now."

The reality of the situation began to weight down on Blaine. Kurt's dad had just discovered Kurt and Blaine in bed together (while they were supposed to be in school). "Nothing happened," Blaine says.

"Of course nothing happened," Kurt says, giving Blaine a look of disgust, which makes Blaine have to wonder _what_ did just happen. Because they were kinda holding hands before they fell asleep, now Kurt seems to hate him again. One step forward, two steps back.

"Get out of my bed," Kurt snaps, and Blaine scrambles to do so. Kurt seems to sag and then refortify himself at the crest of going through his door, to face the music, per se.

Blaine tries to straighten himself out, but nothing will hide his wild hair or the fact he is wearing Kurt's borrowed clothes.

Kurt says to him, "We're going downstairs. Stay at least two steps behind me." Blaine follows the direction exactly.

Kurt enters his kitchen, arms crossed. Kurt's father has one hand busy with a beer and the other pinching at the bridge of his nose between his eyes.

"Dad?" Kurt voice, almost blasé, arms crossed over his chest in a performance of defiance. "It's not what it looked like."

"What it looked like was that there was a boy in your bed," Burt says. Blaine shifts weight between his feet and stays silent. He thinks Kurt wants him to stay silent.

"Oh, yes, Dad we were totally having sex," Kurt snarks, and Blaine wants nothing more than for Kurt to shut up. "Completely clothed on top of my neatly made bed, with nary a drop of bodily fluids anywhere."

"Kurt -"

Blaine couldn't tell if Burt sounded irritated, or if Kurt had out-embarrassed him.

"You want to know what happened?" Kurt demands, it hardly a question. "You want to know?"

"Kurt –" Burt starts again, showing his worn out side.

"'Cause I'll tell you. This loser," Kurt points over his shoulder at Blaine and Blaine can barely muster the energy to feel offended. "Got slushied at school. I know you know what that is… And Miss Pillsbury has been on my back to be nicer to people, so I offered to let him come here and get a shower and wash his clothes."

Burt raises an eyebrow. "And how did he end up in your bed with you?"

This part of the story had not yet been covered. "Emotional, high school drama takes it out of a person."

Burt looks disbelieving. Blaine can't see Kurt's face, but can imagine it parroting a false innocent expression. He decides it's his time to speak.

"Kurt's account is actually completely true, sir."

Burt gives Blaine a 'stop sucking up look' probably not knowing that this was Blaine's default nature.

"I recognize you," Burt says, though it's asked as a question.

"I've brought my mom's car to your show before."

Burt contemplates this for a moment, then remembrance hit him. "Your name, son?"

"Blaine, sir. Blaine Anderson."

"Are you gay, Blaine?" Burt asks.

"Dad!" Kurt says, scandalized.

"I am," Blaine answers steady. He's seen enough to know this was a dangerous place to admit it. "Out and proud."

Steady, Burt counters. "And you were in bed with my son."

"Nothing happened," Blaine assures.

"So I've heard," Burt says dryly.

"I mean," Blaine says. "We held hands, if that's what you're talking about."

Kurt puts hands over his face, obviously embarrassed. But it's enough, enough to get Burt to stop internally freaking out. Because what is ultimately embarrassing his son is not the talk of sex, but the talk of innocent intimacy.

"Blaine, is it?" Burt directs toward Blaine, still standing awkwardly in the corner. "I think you should be heading home."

"Umm," Blaine starts.

Kurt finishes the thought. "He needs a ride."

"And my clothes out of the dryer," Blaine adds, before it can be forgotten.

Burt waves a hand. "Get your clothes, get changed, then I'll drive you home."

"I can drive him," Kurt protests suddenly and on the edge of passionate. It surprises Blaine, considering how standoffish Kurt had been since they woke up. Perhaps Kurt just wanted to avoid Blaine letting out any more embarrassing tidbits.

"No, Kurt, you can't. Because you're grounded and losing all car privileges for skipping school again."

"How is that even supposed to work?"

"I'll drive you to school and I'll pick you up in the afternoon and bring you back to the shop to do your homework in my office until it's time for me to come home, just like when you were a kid."

"Oh my God!" Kurt says before storming off up the stairs with heavy footsteps. This leaves just Burt and Blaine in the kitchen.

Blaine points down the hall and asks awkwardly, "Laundry room's that way?"

…

Maybe halfway to his home, Burt asks of Blaine, "What exactly are your intensions with my son?"

Blaine gulps and then answers, with all honestly he's even surprised with himself for, "I would like to hold his hand again sometime."

"You know Kurt's had a hard time of it in high school…" Burt says.

"I'm new this year," Blaine says.

"Well, he has," Burt says. "And he doesn't need anyone to add anymore problems to it. So if you're interested in him because you think it's going to be easy or fun or that's he's a conquest, and you're gonna ditch him when the first hitch occurs… just leave him alone now."

"No offense, sir, but I've already dealt with about fifteen hitches just trying to talk to Kurt a few times."

Burt snorts a single snort of laughter, hands tugging up on the steering wheel as he takes a turn. "Yeah, that's Kurt. He's pissed off at everything. Not that he doesn't have some good reasons."

Blaine doesn't know what exactly Burt is referencing, but he knows enough of his own experiences of being gay in small town Ohio – the name calling and the feel of fists – to suppose.

"I don't want to toy around with him, sir," Blaine says.

Burt nods. What Blaine said must have been satisfactory.

…

Kurt avoids him most of the next day, until Blaine catches him by accident in the hallway.

"It's your fault I'm grounded and car-less," Kurt tells him.

Blaine says, "Not to be contrary, but you're the one who offered all that help to me yesterday, unprompted."

This shuts Kurt up, although that's not what Blaine wants at all. He doesn't want to outwit Kurt, to silence Kurt, or to trick Kurt.

He wants… Blaine's not sure what he wants. He's scared to want too much from Kurt, not wanting to pressure anything out of the other boy. Kurt doesn't exist for Blaine to work out his issues or fantasies.

"You know," Kurt finally says to him after a long pause. "You're a real smartass."

"Maybe when you're done being grounded we can hang out sometime?" Blaine proposed.

Kurt's eyes narrow, but he doesn't refuse. "Don't presume anything," he says slickly.

Blaine puts his hands up as if proving innocence or swearing an oath. "Nothing presumed."

…

Over the next two weeks Kurt works through his grounding, his father being surprisingly effective at enforcing it, when all the teachers and staff at McKinley High have a difficult time enforcing anything on Kurt, from detention to class schedules. This limits the two of the them to French class interactions and brief hallway encounters. Blaine doesn't see Kurt at lunch any of that time. On the positive side, this means that Blaine has had less of a chance to fuck anything up. It's been smooth, if not substantial, sailing.

Blaine would have tried to sit with Kurt at lunch again, but most of the time Kurt's nowhere to be found. And the time when he is, Blaine notices him too late, already being roped into an _important glee club discussion._

So, catching Kurt in the hall, right at the beginning of lunch period, Blaine asks, "Where do you go to lunch, when you're not at lunch?"

"Do you really want to know?"

Blaine feels like there is a trap of wrong answers for this question. Too much interest is prying. Too little, and why would Kurt take the effort to tell.

"Do you want me to know?" Blaine asks back, a challenge and a gamble.

Out of all the wrong things to say, Blaine must have discovered the right one, for Kurt jerks his head to the side in a signal for Blaine to follow.

They work against the flow of students towards one of the back doors. Kurt has an easier time of this than Blaine. Kurt's much more refined at weaving through people, a skill Blaine got rusty in his year at the less populated and more orderly Dalton. Also, there is a chunk of the student population that just gets out of Kurt's way. They do not treat Blaine with the same favor.

Kurt waits for Blaine to catch up at the door before moving on, throwing out a teasing "amateur."

Kurt leads Blaine through the back lot past the corner of the football stadium to a chain link fence. Three yards down the fence, a large bush blocks them. Like it's nothing, Kurt pushes aside some of the branches and ducks under.

Blaine pauses outside – is this through the rabbit hole?

"You coming?" calls Kurt, teasing.

How could Blaine resist that? He pushes through to an open and shadowed cave of a place.

"What is this?" he asks, looking around.

Kurt bangs a fist on a board over his head. "Old bleachers from before they redid the football stadium. They must've forgotten to scrap this stretch years ago and everyone was too stupefied by school bureaucracy to figure out what to do with it. It was forgotten and overgrown… until I found it." Kurt brushes his fingertips reverently over the place he had just banged. "It's my hideout."

"A hideout from what?" Blaine asks, playing with a vine of ivy around his fingers.

Kurt eases down gracefully to sit on the grass-patched dirt, knees drawn up. "Everyone else," he proposes with a shrug. Blaine continues twisting the ivy, untangling it from its fellows.

"Bullies," Kurt says.

Blaine drops his eyes to Kurt.

"I was a tiny little kid freshman year. Even shorter than you now."

"Ha, ha," Blaine says, but without real ire.

"I was really effeminate – obviously gay. Even more than I am now, when I've turned it into a –" Kurt plays with this strange of his pink hair.

"A statement?" Blaine suggests.

"An armor," Kurt says in amendment. "God, freshman year… I could never drink a slushie again after that year. The thought makes me gag… I stumbled upon this place by accident when I just needed a place to lick my wounds in private, and safely."

Blaine's fist tightens and he accidently rips the vine of ivy from its plant.

"I still like it here," Kurt says. "It's a quiet, and there's no one to judge you." Kurt looks at Blaine like he's waiting for him to break this haven by judging.

Instead of judging, Blaine kneels on a grassy patch next to Kurt. "Did you know this in my third high school?"

Kurt flicks up an eyebrows, though it reads more genuinely surprised than his usual sarcasm.

"Here," Blaine says, counting of one of the three. "Last year, Dalton Academy. It's this fancy prep school in Westerville. We wore these uniforms with navy and red blazers and matching ties –"

"That must have been heaven for you," Kurt says with a small huff.

"It was nice," Blaine says. "But it was also…"

"Strict?" Kurt guesses, unsure.

"Sanitized," Blaine says. "Everyone was just so mannered and nice all the time."

"Oh the humanity," Kurt deadpans.

Blaine shifts in his seat, impassioned by all his own forthcoming words. "But it wasn't real! It was a bunch of young men fitting the mold and performing at being gentlemen. Most of the friendships were surface. There was no real connection, no drama, no passion. It was a great place to heal, but not to practice at living!"

Blaine forces himself to shut up. He's not preaching at Kurt here, really.

Kurt clears his throat and starts carefully, "The sarcastic part of me wants to ask how much time you practiced that in front of the mirror and if it were for something dorky like debate club. The more compassionate side of me has to ask what you mean by heal?"

Blaine takes a swallow, his throat suddenly dry. "So, my first school… well, I came out there. And it was rough. Rough at school. Rough at home… and, well, there was this Sadie Hawkins dance, and I asked the only other out gay guy in the school, just as friends. So we went. I guess we thought we revolutionaries or something…"

Blaine stops and pinches the bridge of his nose. There's a stress headache of just remembering already coming on. He takes a few calming breathes, a tactic he's learned.

"After the dance, while we were waiting for his dad to come pick us up… these three guys. They beat the living shit out of us."

His hands fidget badly, overturning the ivy vine until Kurt's hands settle on top of his, freezing them, even as Kurt whispers "Stop." Kurt slips the wine out of Blaine's now limp hands.

"And I ran away," Blaine says. "Finished that school year through correspondence course. I didn't stand up. It was so weak."

"No," Kurt says bluntly. "Doing what you have to do to survive is never weak."

Blaine sits quietly under the chastisement, wishing he could believe it for himself. Kurt walked the halls with his bullies every day.

"Here," Kurt shifts sideways closer. He lays the ivy, now twisted into a wreath, onto Blaine's head. "Like a hero of ancient Greece, so you'll remember you're never weak for surviving."

Blaine adjusts the wreath above his ear. "I'm pretty sure none of this is historically accurate."

"I wouldn't know. I think I skipped that class."

There might've been a day where Blaine took that straight forward serious as it was, but now he knows enough to read the nuance in Kurt's expression – the genuine behind the actor's practiced mask of indifference and cynicism. Kurt sitting next to him in private his Narnia, sunlight filtering through the slates and ivy making Kurt glow.

"Kurt Hummel," Blaine says, looking him dead in the eye, "One of these days I might just kiss you."

Kurt blinks once – surprise – and twice – knowing. He learns in and says, "And one of these days I might let you."

It was almost that day, but then, not sure if the chimes were in his head or real, Blaine blathers, "Was that the school bell?"

"Oh my god, bowtie!"

"Hey, I'm wearing an actual necktie today."

"That doesn't make it any better."

"…But seriously, was that the school bell?"

Kurt kicks at him playfully. "Yes. Now get to class, you nerd."

Blaine stands, gathering his bag. "What about you?" he asks.

Kurt shakes his head. "Don't you know anything about me by now?"

Blaine starts out but before pushing through the bush, he remember the ivy wreath on his head. He trots back to Kurt.

"What?" Kurt questions from where he has leaned back to relax.

Blaine takes the wreath and transplants it atop Kurt's hair. "So you remember the same thing."

Kurt looks stunned, then somber, then says, "Thanks."


	6. Nose Rings and Coffee

**Chapter 6**

"Guess who's completely grounded-free," Kurt says, having walked up to Blaine at his locker. This is the first time Kurt's ever approached him in the hallway.

Blaine's moving his books from his satchel to his locker in a methodical manner. "You, I'm guessing. Though I know you've still been skipping class."

"Yes, but not getting caught," Kurt snarks back. He leans his length up against the row of lockers. "So, I'm getting a new piercing today, want to come with?"

"I thought you had to be eighteen for that," Blaine says.

"You think I was eighteen for these." Kurt motions at his face, where his eyebrow and lip are pierced. "Fake id, duh."

"So you're breaking the law on the first day you're free of being grounded?" Blaine makes sure he has all his necessary books for homeroom, then shuts his locker door.

Kurt waves a hand in the air as if flicking away the concern. "You coming or not?"

Blaine has never felt the urge to visit a piercing parlor, but if it meant spending time with Kurt outside of school…

"Sure. When?" Blaine asks.

"Right after school."

"I have glee."

"I suppose I can't convince you to skip it?"

Blaine shakes his head. He's had enough of an experience skipping school last time.

"After glee then. I'll wait for you."

…

The rest of the day and glee practice went smoothly. As the club shifts out of choir room, Kurt is sitting on the hallway floor leaning back against the lockers. He's playing a game on his phone. He doesn't spare the effort to pause his game to acknowledge the other members of the glee club. The glee club spares plenty of looks between themselves as they see Kurt there. Blaine waits for them to leave.

Mercedes pauses in the doorway, one of the last out. She stares at Kurt for a moment like she's staring at a puzzle. Blaine watches her, saying nothing.

After a moment, most of the others dispersed and out of earshot, she says quietly, "Hey, Kurt."

Kurt looks up, a little startled at her soft voice, before culling his expression down to disaffection. "Hey," he responds.

That's the extent of the exchange. Kurt directs his eyes back to his phone. Mercedes looks like she wants to say more, shifting her weight between her feet a few times before turning down the hall.

"Ready to go?" Blaine asks.

Kurt pushes himself to his feet. "Let's go."

As they walk, Blaine asks, "So what was that, between you and Mercedes?" like he doesn't know anything.

"We used to hang, a long time ago. She probably doesn't want anything to do with me anymore."

"So she said hello?"

"It's called manners, Blaine."

Blaine snorts. "What do you know about manners?"

"I know they exist, asshole."

…

Somehow Blaine ends up somewhere he never thought he'd go willing and sober before, a tattoo and piercing parlor. Behind the counter stands a woman with a half-shaved head and two full sleeves of tattoos up her arms, looking rather scary until she smiles when she catches sight of Kurt.

"Hey, K," she says. "Finally going to let me ink you up."

Kurt smiles, leaning up against the front counter, all-in-all more comfortable here than Blaine's ever seen him in school. "I've told you before, Maya, my skin's much too delicate."

The woman with the half-shaved head, Maya, pets Kurt's arm. "But that's what would make it so pretty," she half-whines, half-admires. Blaine had never found tattoos all that attractive before, but he sees Maya's point.

"I want to get my nose pierced," Kurt tells her.

"Nostril or septum?" Maya's suddenly all business.

"Nostril." Kurt points to his nose on the same side as his eyebrow bar. "I was thinking a small hoop would look good."

Maya hmmed in agreement. "I'm assuming silver-tone to match the others."

"Of course." Kurt sounds almost snide as he says this. Maya pulls out a tray of nose rings from under the glass counter for him to peruse.

Maya's eyes turn to Blaine, standing a little behind Kurt, observing him in his apparently natural habitat. "What about you, honey? Want to get anything pierced today?"

"Oh, um, no. I'm just here for support… I think." Kurt's done this twice before without him, so Blaine's not really sure why he's here.

Kurt snickers. "Does he really look like the type?"

"You'd be surprised what straight-laced people have hidden under their clothes," Maya says, eyeing Blaine carefully.

"I have nothing hidden under my clothes," Blaine says, very specifically.

Maya laughs. "I like him," she says to Kurt. "Who is he?"

"I'm Blaine," Blaine says, resisting the urge to offer his hand to shake, because everything seems more casual here. Maybe he should stop standing so stiff.

"You heard him," Kurt says, head ducked low as he examines the nose ring collection.

Like an older sister trying to embarrass him, she ducks down next to him and says in a completely hearable whisper, "But who is he to _you_?"

"Just some guy," Kurt mutters, voice-low, but Blaine is much too close to all of this for any of it to be disguised.

"Just some guy, sure," Maya repeats, glancing up over Kurt at Blaine. An expression of knowing all is well-placed on her face.

"This one," Kurt announces loudly, plucking a ring from the foam backing. Blaine suspects his final choice was made purely to keep Maya from saying more.

"Okay, let's get you in a chair," she says, waving for them to come around the counter. "You can come too, _Blaine_. Hold K's hand or something to help him through the pain."

"Oh my god," Kurt says, fleeing around the counter before Blaine can catch a clearer image of his blushed face.

…

"What do you think?" Kurt examines his new piercing from different angels in his rear view mirror.

"I think you could pull any look off," Blaine says from the passenger seat, examining Kurt's features him while Kurt is too distracted to notice.

"I'm not sure if that is a compliment or a polite insult."

"It's a compliment," Blaine reassures. Kurt's nose ring is a balance of a little pretty and a little edgy that works for who Kurt is. But Blaine might be biased by the experience though, for Blaine had dared to employ Maya's suggestion. He slipped his hand into Kurt's as Maya had been busy with the preparation. Kurt hadn't pulled away, even if he did throw Blaine an only half-venomous stink eye. And when the needle went through the side of his nose, Kurt did squeeze Blaine's hand in reflex.

"So, how did _K_ become a nickname?"

"Let's just say the first letter of my first name is the only thing on my fake id that is remotely true."

"And Maya knows it's a fake?"

"Of course not," Kurt says in a tone that is _of course yes._

"Will your dad be upset that you got your nose pierced?"

Kurt looks down from the mirror to his passenger. "Do you ask a lot of questions?"

Blaine shrugs. "Just curious."

"My dad and I have an arrangement not to argue about my self-expression as long as I don't do anything permanent."

"So no tattoos," Blaine states.

"It's an easy concession considering I don't want one. Just don't tell my dad that. He thinks he won a victory there."

…

In English class, Mercedes usually sits with Tina, but today she sits down next to Blaine.

"You seem to hang out with Kurt a lot now," she says to him, rolling her pen between her fingers. Mercedes is often an outspoken person, and in New Directions, you have to be outspoken to be heard over the chaos. However, whenever she speaks to Blaine about Kurt, her meeker side rises to the surface.

"I do," Blaine replies. He waits.

"How is he?" she asks.

"He's good. I mean… I'm still getting to know him, really, but… he seems good."

She taps her pen on the desk. "Good."

"…You should ask him yourself sometime," Blaine says.

"Oh, I don't think he wants to talk to me."

"I don't think that's true."

Mercedes' eyes slide to him sharp. "How do you figure, boy?"

"Kurt's, well, he's really guarded. Like barb wire guarded. But I think he likes it when people are nice to him, but not when they want anything from him for it. Just nice to him because he's him."

"Isn't that what we all want?" Mercedes asks.

Blaine chuckles. "I suppose so. He just makes you prove it more."

…

By this point in the year, Mrs. Boggart has already given up and just gives out worksheets most of her classes. Kurt filled his out within the first ten minutes of class and is now concentrating on his using his phone under the desk. The guy really does have an obsession with Angry Birds.

Blaine kicks at Kurt's chair leg to get his attention. "You doing anything after school?"

"Is that your polite way of asking if I have detention or have been grounded again?" Kurt asks.

"No, it's my way of asking if you're doing anything after school, because if you're not you can do something with me."

"You decide to get a piercing too?" Kurt asks with raised eyebrows.

"I was thinking something more like coffee," Blaine says.

"I like coffee," Kurt says, matter-of-fact.

"…So?"

"Let's see if I make it to the end of today without getting detention and go from there?"

Kurt does make it to the end of the day without getting detention. Blaine wonders if Kurt would have intentionally gotten detention to get out of their plans if he decided partway through the day he didn't want to do. But that was all guessing, and Kurt now following him to the parking lot.

"Follow me in your car," Blaine suggests. He leads Kurt on a not far drive to a little, independent coffee place called the Lima Bean. Blaine had been to a few times before.

Kurt snorts. "Clever name."

"It catches the eye, come on." He holds the coffee shop's door open for Kurt.

They wait in line together. When they get to the counter, Blaine motions for Kurt to order first.

"Grande nonfat mocha," Kurt says, starting to pull out his wallet.

"I got it," Blaine says, pulling out his wallet faster. He orders his coffee of choice, a medium drip, and has the barista put them both on the same bill. Distracted by the transaction, Blaine doesn't realize the how quiet Kurt has dropped off.

He's quiet while they wait for the orders, Blaine chattering about how a classmate introduced to this place while he attended Dalton. Kurt's quiet as they move through the place to get a table, Blaine asking Kurt if his drink is to his liking.

They reach the table, and Kurt interrupts, "Don't pull out my chair."

Blaine startles still, confused. "What?"

Kurt sits down and doesn't answer. He turns his coffee cup between his fingers.

"Kurt…?" Blaine asks carefully. He sits down and tries to get a look at Kurt's downturned face. He's scowling. "What's going on?"

"This isn't a date," Kurt says, glaring at the tabletop.

"…um."

"You said we were getting coffee after school. Not going on a date," Kurt snaps. He's still not making eye contact.

"What makes this a date?" Blaine had just wanted to hang out with Kurt.

"Paying for my coffee. Holding open the door…"

"I was just being nice," Blaine says, but part of him wonders if there was more. He surely hadn't labeled this as a date in his head, although it was true that their interactions had been growing flirtier. Perhaps Blaine's subconscious had subtly transformed it into something more.

"No," Kurt says, finally looking up at Blaine but only to glower. "You're turning this into more than I agreed to."

Blaine sighs. "I'm sorry… I didn't mean for any of this to make you uncomfortable. I just wanted to hang out with you, really."

Kurt mumbles a _whatever_ and takes a sip of his mocha.

"If it makes you feel better, you can pay me back for the coffee."

"I'm not paying you back for the coffee, bowtie. After all this emotional duress, I deserve a free coffee."

Blaine holds back a laugh. If Kurt is joking, than Blaine is somewhat forgiven.

Quietly for a while they drink their coffee before Blaine dares to ask the question that's bothering him.

"Kurt… After what we said under the bleachers… if this were a date, would that be so bad?"

Kurt sucks in his lips, maybe an expression of nerves or thought. He answers, "I said I _might_ let you… one day. But I don't like being forced, or tricked, into anything."

Knowing Kurt, this makes sense.

"Okay… Next time we can both buy our own coffee."

"What makes you think there will be a next time?" Kurt replies, arching his eyebrow like he does.

"The fact you already finished your coffee… this place gets you hooked."

* * *

On both sites that I have this story posted on, here and AO3 (under the penname ungoodpirate if you're interested in reading on that platform instead) this story had a bit of a surge of popularity after I posted last chapter. I don't know if Chapter 5 was the chapter that finally sold the story to the readers or if my new summary was successful or maybe if some people don't like reading story until several chapters have been posted. Hell, or maybe this got put on a rec list somewhere. A mystery...


	7. A Reconciliation

After the awkwardness of the not-date dissipated, Blaine was able to bring up something that had been concerning him.

"Do you harbor any hatred towards Mercedes?"

"That's a non sequitur, and… no."

Blaine hmmed.

"Wait, have you been talking with her about me behind my back?"

"Um… well, in my defense she's almost always the one to bring it up… and it's only been nice things."

"You're incorrigible," Kurt says, and it sounds light-hearted, but his mouth settles in tight

Blaine laughs. "I'm sorry. It's just… between the two of us, judging by like, superficial appearance, I don't think people would call me the incorrigible one."

Kurt sticks the tip of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. "That's kinda the whole point," Kurt says, which does not make any sense to Blaine, but of course, Blaine's head is not in a truly concentrated place as he stares at Kurt's tongue just peaking out. He really needs to stop being a pervert.

Kurt's tongue retreats, and Blaine's brain snaps mostly back into place. Kurt's lips are still there.

"So, Mercedes is asking about me?"

"Yeah, she noticed us hanging out. She's wondering if you were okay?"

Kurt takes a sip of his coffee before asking, "What'd you tell her?"

"I told her it was too complicated for a straight answer."

Kurt snorts into his drink. "There are no easy answers," he agrees.

Their conversation wonders off into other, inconsequential but enjoyable things.

…

They had agreed to another afternoon of coffee after school, sometime the next week.

"Well, I got detention, so I will meet you after your loser glee club," Kurt had told him. Mr. Schue was sick, however, so after an attempt at a student run meeting, they dispersed early.

Blaine waited for Kurt outside of the detention room, but when it vacated at four-thirty, Kurt wasn't among the students.

"Excuse me," he asks the frazzled teacher. "Where's Kurt Hummel?"

"Kurt Hummel didn't have detention today," the teacher says, a certain tired derision over the word _today._

Blaine wanders the halls. He pulls out his phone to text, but realizes he's never actually exchanged phone numbers with Kurt. With all they've done and been through, there have been no texts, no phone calls. It's all been so viscerally in person.

He passes by the auditorium, a place he's performed a handful of times with the glee club, but only in practice and for the club. He hears it, so faint, and only because the hall is empty of any other noise. HeHe

Blaine pushes through the auditorium door. He's nothing but curious, and whoever is singing deserves some applause. Plus, New Directions could use that voice in its repertoire.

Only the most basic lights are on in the theater, moderate above the seating, and a little brighter over the stage. So at first all Blaine can make out is a shadowy figure moving around on his stage until his eyes adjust to the dimness. Then he recognized the figure – Kurt.

Badass, sneers at everyone Kurt is on the stage, belting out high notes of… is that 'Rose's Turn'? His voice is crystal clear and beautiful, which is both surprising and not. Kurt had a higher speaking voice than the average guy, so it makes sense that his singing voice would follow suit. But to hear the passion in it, the vulnerability, alone on the stage, performing for no one… It made Blaine sink a little deeper into the mire of feelings he had for the boy.

The last note reverberated around the auditorium. Then Kurt was just left panting on the stage. Blaine claps. Kurt jerks. He looks desperately around, trying to identify where and who it is coming from.

"It's me," Blaine calls out to give Kurt an answer. He steps forward from the back so he can be seen.

There's a visible sag of relief to Kurt's shoulders. He comes to the edge of the stages, squats, then hops down.

"Of all people, it would be you who sneaks in on me, bowtie."

"I didn't know you could sing," Blaine says, ignoring Kurt's chastisement.

"Most people don't know. Except for my dad and now you. And I don't think my dad knows I still sing." Kurt rubs his hands on the front of his thighs, perhaps in nervous habit. "We don't have to go through the whole _you don't tell anyone_ thing, right?"

An idea pops into Blaine's head. "You should join glee!"

Kurt squints at him. "That doesn't really fit into the whole _no one should no_ thing."

"But people should know!" Blaine protests enthusiastically, able to actually feel his own grin. He can't fight it down. "You have an amazing voice."

"Blaine…" Kurt says in a tone as though getting ready to disappoint a child with the truth that there is no Santa Claus.

Blaine's smile sinks. "Why? Because you think it'll ruin your tough reputation? What's with you and appearances anyway?"

Kurt rolls his eyes. "You're an idiot." He starts to press past Blaine, toward the exit.

"Wait, don't let me stop you from… I mean, you can keep singing."

Kurt's eyes drift longingly over to the stage.

Bashfully, Blaine tries, "Sing for me."

Kurt gnaws at his bottom lip. His eyes come back from the stage to Blaine. "I… I can't."

"Why not?" Blaine challenges softly.

"Because…" Kurt grits his teeth, then spits out an admission. "Because I sound weird, okay."

"I think you sound wonderful."

"Maybe I don't care what you think!" Kurt shouts. It echoes in the auditorium. This shuts Blaine up. Kurt sighs, and it's full of rough-edged frustration. He rings his fingers through his hair and looks like he is about to pull it out. "Why do you always have to push things?"

"I'm… I'm sorry," Blaine says, voice sounding hollow, and he feeling hollow. He had let his enthusiasm get the better of him.

"And stop saying you're sorry," Kurt snaps.

"Well, I am," Blaine protests. What can he do if he can't apologize? "I keep screwing up, so I need to keep being sorry."

"And stop making it about you."

"What?" Blaine says, but it's barely voiced and even less heard as Kurt drops his hands from his hair and rants.

"Believe it or not, very little of what I do is about you. I've lived over seventeen years of my life before you showed up in your polka dot bowtie."

"I know," Blaine says. He feels small under Kurt's rage.

"I mean, what's the big idea? Why do you keep inserting yourself into my life, my choices!"

Blaine's shoulders edge up, himself shrinking. Had he read this all wrong, from the beginning? Was he always unwanted? Because _unwanted_ feels like an ice bath.

"Please stop yelling," Blaine says. It's eeked out as a whisper.

But Kurt's in a proper whirlwind. "Don't tell me what to do!"

Blaine squeezes his eyes shut and says, even quieter, "Please."

Kurt's silent for a moment. Blaine has to wonder if he's gone – walked away or evaporated.

"Shit." Kurt's tone is cutting, but not at Blaine.

Blaine peeks his eyes open. He's remembering his own breathing exercises. He knows what it is to snap.

Perhaps there is some remorse in Kurt's tight expression, but mostly it seems like a different type of anger. "I forgot," Kurt says, pinching the bridge of his nose as if to fight off a headache.

"Forgot what?" Blaine asks tentatively. Asking too much had what gotten him into this situation.

"That I'm not the only one who's scared," Kurt says. "I'm like the immune system… I'm just trying to protect myself, but sometimes I attack the wrong things."

"I guess you went to that class," Blaine jokes, but it is under with his quietness and his still draining anxiety.

"Well," Kurt says, drumming his fingers on the top of a chair. "I do want to graduate."

Neither of them say anything for a while. There's never been such a two-sided fault between them.

"Are you okay, now?" Kurt asks.

Blaine returns a quick, meaningless, "I'm fine."

"You were kind of pale there. It reminded me of… me."

It made sense, Kurt's sudden reaction one way and then another. Kurt was right, they were both scared. Why not, considering the hurts they had suffered? So sure, he exploded angrily at Blaine, because Blaine's had pierced past Kurt's armor, but that was the thing… Kurt had, at multiple times, let Blaine willingly beyond that armor. So when Kurt saw Blaine just as scared Kurt had been once – or maybe always was in private – Kurt hadn't wanted it. Maybe Kurt understands more and more that Blaine wasn't someone Kurt had to protect himself from.

"It wasn't you," Blaine tells Kurt. He wants to approach him, take him by the shoulders to assure. He doesn't. He thinks they both need the cushion of physical distance right now. They well have, several feet separating them.

"It was," Kurt retorts. "But I understand what you're saying. I just…"

"Triggered it, yeah."

The retreat into hibernation of quiet again.

"Should we go get that coffee now?" Blaine asks.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Kurt says, then with a quick addition, "It's not you. I just… don't think that a good idea right now."

…

"You should have your friends over sometime," Blaine's mom tells him as he helps her prepare dinner that evening.

"Oh," Blaine says, surprised, "Maybe." He's so stuck in his head over his fight with Kurt that he wasn't really present in the moment.

"You're making friends, aren't you?" The undercut of worry is present in his mother's tone.

"Yeah, of course, I just don't if we're close enough for me to invite them into my home," Blaine says, excusing himself. His closest bond so far was with Kurt. Kurt, who would probably balk at Blaine inviting into his home. Kurt, who would probably swear and glare at his mother.

"Have you gone to any of their homes?"

"Once…" Blaine grimaces at his thoughtless reveal, because that would demand explanation. "I mean, one of theirs, _one_, briefly."

Mom turns her attention to the stove and stirs a pot. She checks Blaine out of the corner of her eye. "And who would this _one_ be?"

Blaine dumps the carrots he just shredded into the salad bowl. He tries his best to force a nonchalant tone. "Kurt. Kurt Hummel."

Mom continues stirring for a few moments, and Blaine is instantly suspicious of her behavior.

"Is he in your show choir?" she asks.

"No. He's in my French class."

"Is he…," she trails off.

Blaine faces her, eyebrows raised up. "Gay?" he fills in.

Mom stops stirring. "I was going to say _nice._"

"No you weren't."

"I think it's important for you to make friends with people who share your experiences!" his mom protests. But Blaine knows she's worried. It's was going to a dance with a gay classmate that got him assaulted.

Mom clears her throat, starts stirring again. "So, are you and this Kurt –"

"No," Blaine instantly interrupts.

"Blaine, you didn't even know what I was going to say," says Mom, slightly irritated.

"Yes, I do."

"Really, then what, pray tell, was I about to say?"

"You were going to ask if we were dating," Blaine responds smoothly.

Mom pinches her lips together in a way Blaine knows means he is right, but she is frustrated by that fact he is right.

"Well, then. If he hosted you at his home, it's only polite that you return the offer."

"What if he says no?"

"You'll never know until you ask," Mom retorts, resounding off a tidbit she must have picked up in some etiquette manual.

Blaine huffs silently. He doesn't really have to ask. He knows.

…

Dost Blaine's eyes deceive him? It's the morning after. He's at his locker. And there comes Kurt down the hallway. Was the boy coming to give him a delayed punch in the face? Or was he going to talk to Blaine like nothing had happened last afternoon?

Neither, apparently, for Kurt walked straight past Blaine, and not in his usually raged way he did when he just wanted people to get out of his way.

Kurt stops a few feet down, where Mercedes is transferring her books from her bag into her locker. Blaine doesn't mean to invade, but he's close enough to overhear.

"I love your outfit today. Purple and gold? Very trendy. Royal, even."

Mercedes is quiet at first, stunned. Blaine pulse starts to rush. He really wants this to work out. For Mercedes. For Kurt. Blaine doesn't matter in this picture right now and he finds that a relief and a blessing… to know that his interest in Kurt isn't purely selfish.

Mercedes flicks a strand of hair over her shoulder and smile. "Well, yes, _Royal_ is my middle name. And not all of us can pull of black and pink like you."

"We all have our talents."

Blaine breathes easy. It's a connection. A start. He gets the rest of class materials together and heads off. He can leave them to their bonding in private.

…

In English, Mercedes sits next to him again, sliding in just before the bell rings.

"Thank you," she says.

"I didn't do anything," Blaine replies.

Mercedes rolls her eyes. "Sure."

…

Mercedes and Kurt cozy up pretty fast, or so Blaine can deduce from them coming up to him in the hall together. Mercedes asks: "Are you the other European history class with Mr. Drayson?"

"Um, yes," Blaine answers. He glances at Kurt, but has a 'too cool for school' stance to him and appears to be only half listening.

"There's a test tomorrow," she says.

"I know."

"Well, do you want to come to Kurt's after school to study?"

Blaine glances at Kurt again. Nothing.

"Um, sure," Blaine says.

"Great. See you later."

The two of them leave together.

…

"Hey, loser, eat lunch with me," Kurt says, kicking at Blaine's bare ankle to get his attention.

Blaine nods, and follows Kurt, who leads him out behind the secret bleachers again.

"What changed between yesterday afternoon and today?" Blaine asks as they settle in, both with bagged lunches.

"What do you mean?" Kurt asks, picking the crust off his sandwich.

"You said us hanging out was 'not a good idea'," Blaine says with an aborted shrug. He needs to stop dampening his words with shrugs. It's like he's walking around as an apology for everything he even thinks.

Kurt side-eyes him. "I didn't mean forever, bowtie."

"Everything seemed to explode yesterday." Blaine doesn't have another way to say it. Yesterday, it went off the tracks. They've had their bumps, but the two of them had seemed to be progressing, as friends and maybe as something more.

Kurt puts down his sandwich and shifts around to he can face Blaine slant-ways. They had been sitting side by side, although with a respectable gap between them.

"Don't you get it?" Kurt asks. His head is tilted inward, a sign of interest, a sign of openness. It's Kurt, guard at least somewhat down.

"I'm confused," Blaine admits. Kurt's probably the thing he _gets_ least in his life at the moment.

"You see more of me than anymore, even my dad lately. And I don't mean 'more' like time. Just _more._"

"I'm not any less confused," Blaine says. He wrinkled the brown bag he brought his lunch in between his fingers.

"Why do you think I dress like this?" Kurt waves toward himself. Today he's in even bigger boots than the first day they met, and is wearing black, fingerless gloves on both hands. "It's the same reason I don't want anyone to know I sing, and sing showtunes at that… the reason I flipped off the handle at you yesterday… Don't you get it?"

"Kurt…" Blaine starts, but it's clear from his tone he doesn't know.

Kurt just shakes his head and sighs quietly, interrupting what was sure to be Blaine's failed attempt at puzzling out Kurt.

"I can't change my voice," Kurt says, "I can't change the way I look. I can't pass, and when I was in the closet it was transparent as hell… I can either be someone they beat up or someone they're afraid of. And I choose the latter."

Kurt sinks back into his spot. He returns to tearing up his sandwich. Blaine lets his words settle in.

"I'm sorry," Blaine says.

Kurt rolls his eyes. "I told you to stop saying sorry."

"No, I mean… I know you hate when people apologize for things that aren't there fault. But I'm sorry you live in a world you're not safe to be yourself."

Kurt takes a big bite of his sandwich, takes his time chewing. After swallowing, he replies, "I'm sorry we both do."

* * *

Aki - I'm worried that Kurt's behavior seems erratic (well, in a way it is ), but I want to assure you readers that I have a whole back story and psychology for why he acts the way he acts, but because this is written from Blaine's POV we don't get to see it. However, all this will pay off. And soon, actually. Hope you enjoyed.


	8. Yes, No, Maybe

**Chapter 8 **

"Don't mean to be rude, but is this all we're doing this afternoon? I thought we were supposed to be studying history," Blaine says to Mercedes and Kurt sitting on the floor. Kurt holding her hand in his as he paints her nails.

"If you don't like it, you can go," Kurt says, although the threat is only half-hearted.

"Don't talk to your boyfriend like that," Mercedes scolds with a smile. Kurt's hand jerks, getting nail polish on Mercedes skin rather than her fingernail.

"He's not my boyfriend."

Mercedes glances at Blaine, hiding his face behind his textbook, and Kurt.

Kurt leans forward and whispers fortuitously. "Did he say we were boyfriends?"

"I didn't," Blaine protests, because he knows about how such a thing could upset Kurt.

"No… I just assumed." Mercedes glances between them again. "Oh. I see how it is."

"See how what is?" Kurt asks, still stunned.

"The two of you," Mercedes says. "It's cute."

Kurt scowls heavily and Mercedes laughs at his exaggerated expression. Her casual disregard for the expression that usually has nerds scurrying startles Kurt out of it. Blaine, peaking over the top edge of his textbook, has to agree with Mercedes. Kurt is cute, especially now with that look of bewilderment.

Around five thirty, Burt walks through the front door only to stop short at the site in his living room: Kurt with two friends, sprawled out across the living room with their homework.

"What's going on here?" he asks, befuddled.

"We're studying. What does it look like," Kurt retorts.

"It wasn't an accusation, Kurt," Burt says, weary.

Mercedes looks a little uncomfortable in the middle of the family squabble. Blaine's been in much more comfortable situations involving Kurt and his father.

Maybe for the sake of his houseguests, Kurt chills. "This is Mercedes. You know Blaine," he says as introduction.

"Hi, Mr. Hummel," Mercedes says politely.

"If you kids are sticking around, I can order some pizza."

Pizza was agreed upon. By the time it arrived, they were sick of homework, so they put in a movie and ate off TV trays in the living room. Burt, deciding not to be a lurking parent, ate in the attached kitchen, reading the newspaper.

Being the responsible one, halfway through the movie, once they were all done eating, Blaine collects their empty plates and takes them to a kitchen. He sets them in the sink.

"Hey, kid," Burt says to him. Blaine turns, a nervous bite in his gut. He hasn't talked to Kurt's father since the man drove him home after he caught Kurt and Blaine in bed together. "That girl… Kurt and her used to hang out a few years ago. But then Kurt hung out with no one for a long. You the reason they're friends again?"

"I'm pretty sure both of them wanted to be friends. I just opened the channel."

"So that's a yes," Burt says. "A humble yes, but a yes."

Blaine shrugs. He doesn't think he can take the credit.

Burt clears his throat gruffly. "Well, I might not like coming home to find my son in bed with a strange boy, but I do like coming home to see him with friends."

Blaine got what this was, approval. A leap forward from his back first impression.

"Thank you, sir," he says.

Burt lifts up his paper. "You're missing the movie," he says, a dismissal, but a good kind.

During the time Blaine was in the kitchen, Kurt and Mercedes had relocated from the couch to the floor. They had made a sort of nest out of throw pillows and removable couch cushions and afghan blankets.

"You're missing the best part, bowtie," Kurt admonishes. Blaine lingers in the doorway. Kurt pats the empty spot on his left (on his right, he is leeched on by Mercedes), "Come sit down, loser."

Blaine does, pulling his knees up and wrapping his arms loose around them. Due to the limited space of the nest, he's in close proximity to Kurt. When Kurt throws back his head to laugh at something Mercedes whispered in his ear, their shoulders brush.

There's something divine and sculpture-esque to the curve of Kurt's jaw line and the lines of his long neck. But better, there was something so flawed, human, and playful to the lines around his squinted eyes when he smiled wide. It was a rare sight, and Blaine wished to memorize it on his corneas so that anytime he closed his eyelids he could draw it up.

"What?" Kurt asks, pulling Blaine out of his ponderings. He touches the side of his face like he expects some speck of food to be there, to explain Blaine's stares.

"Nothing," Blaine whispers back with the barest shake of his head.

Kurt elbows him. "Watch the movie." It's implicit, 'not me.' So Blaine gets more subtle about, glancing through the corner of his eyes at careful intervals. He wants to be able to watch the movie, to put aside the lovelorn ache that was building up in his chest, and just immerse in the fiction. He needs a distraction. But there's a magnetic pull: from his eyes to Kurt, from his mind to Kurt, from his heart to Kurt.

Blaine knew, knew, knew he had liked Kurt for a long while now. But it was today, sharing in such a casual, friendly moment with Kurt so close and yet a millions away, Blaine knew he was fucked.

…

At school, a few days later, Mercedes says: "You really have it bad for him, don't you?"

"Who?" Blaine replies.

"_Who_?" Mercedes complains back at him.

Blaine ducks his head bashfully. "I do."

Mercedes smacks his arm. "Then whatcha going to do about it?"

"It's not that easy." If only it was. "And it's not like glee. I can't publically serenade him and hope for the best. He would hate that."

"Then privately serenade him. God, boy, you need to something. Your one-sided, moony-eyed looks are getting a little sad."

"Thanks."

"Well, it's better me telling you now than everybody telling you later… do you want to me see if I can find out if he likes you too?" she asks.

"No. Kurt keeps secrets better than the NSA."

Mercedes scoffs. "Not from you."

"Huh?"

"You're so dunce. You and my boy Kurt both."

…

"Mercedes should be here by now." Kurt pulls out his phone to check the time and then starts texting away. After a successful study session two weeks before, all three of them had planned to meet up again, this time to study for physics. They were all in different sessions, but all had tests forthcoming later that school week. While Kurt and Blaine were all ready to study in Kurt's living room, Mercedes was noticeably absent.

Kurt stares at his phone, waiting for a response. Blaine still doesn't have Kurt's phone number. He's not sure if this is just something overlooked, or on purpose, or Kurt prefers to talk to him in person. Blaine's sort of too afraid to ask. It would be awkward at this point, wouldn't it?

There's a chime. Kurt's received a return text. "She says she forgot about her church choir practice and can't make it. Please study without her," Kurt says, voice droll.

Blaine's fairly sure Mercedes 'forgot' on purpose. Blaine's not sure if to bless the woman or to curse her. Ever since Mercedes' and Kurt's reconciliation (which Blaine is thrilled about – Kurt deserves and needs more friends than just Blaine), most hanging out had been done with all three of them. With the exception of French class, Blaine rarely saw Kurt alone. When Kurt bothered to eat lunch publically, both Mercedes and Blaine had joined him. In a few cases, Blaine let the two of them have lunch to themselves and ate with the glee kids instead. The two had a lot to catch up on.

Of course, some days Kurt was invisible at lunch, meaning he was under the bleachers. Blaine has not been invited back under the bleachers since his second trip there. It would be wrong to go there uninvited. As far as Blaine knew, Kurt hadn't taken Mercedes to the bleachers nor told her a word about them.

"I guess we should get started," Blaine says, thumbing through the textbook.

"Right," Kurt says with a sharp _t._ He sits down on the couch, tight against the armrest, the farthest he can be from Blaine.

"Um," Blaine mutters. Last time the three of them had studied (when they actually got around to studying) they had all crowded around their shared open text books, half-filled out study guides, and notebooks.

Kurt crosses his legs, closing his body language off even more, shrinking himself down and away from Blaine.

"Maybe we should postpone this," Kurt says.

"She said to study without her." He intends to keep this visit polite and to purpose. If the two of them can't stand to be in the same room together under the true pretense of studying, there is little hope for them.

Kurt tugs at a loose thread on the armrest. "I don't think that's fair to Mercedes."

"Can we reschedule for tomorrow?"

"I'm helping my dad at the shop tomorrow afternoon," Kurt says.

"And the test is the day after. So you need to study today. Either with me or without me." He's not trying to catch Kurt in a conundrum, but really just wanting to figure things out.

Kurt leans back and gives Blaine an evil eye that's sizzling. "Then without you."

"Did I do something wrong?"

"… I just think I'll be better studying by myself."

Blaine closes his book, grips it stiff on his lap. "But… I thought we all said the other day that we got better history grades because we were such a great study group."

"That was history, this is physics. I think I'll be better studying this one on my own."

"Are you physics genius?" Blaine asks.

Kurt's hand flairs as he snaps, "Can you just get out!"

Blaine immediately starts to collect his books and put them into his bag. He didn't know what was wrong, but if someone didn't want him in their home, he wasn't going to be as rude and even cruel as not to leave. It would be invading to stay.

He gets up, ready to go to the door, and – while he's not sure where things went wrong – says, "I'm sorry."

Almost an automatic response at this point, Kurt says, "Stop apologizing."

"I know. I'm sorry." Blaine slaps a hand over his mouth. "I'll go now." He heads toward the entryway.

"Wait," Kurt calls after him. Blaine glances over his shoulder to see him standing. "Look. It's not you. I feel like I'm saying that all the time now."

"Then what is it?" Blaine dares to ask.

Kurt drops his eyes to the floor before raising them back to catch Blaine's. He wraps one arm around his middle. "I've been noticing the way you've been looking at me lately, and it's really intense. I don't think I can deal with that all afternoon without a buffer."

Mercedes had warned him about his moony-eyes.

"So… it is kind of me."

Kurt huffs, an almost laugh. "I guess it kinda is… I should really use my words instead of being a bitch all the time."

"I don't think you're a bitch," Blaine says.

Kurt snorts, drops the protective, wrapped arm. "You obviously need to study you're vocabulary. I mean, I knew you sucked at French, but English too?"

"Wow, harsh," Blaine responds. He takes a breath. "Do you still want me to leave?"

"No," Kurt says instantly, then, "Yes… no… maybe?"

A song stuck in his head from the drive over comes to mind, so Blaine says without much thought, "You're hot and you're cold..."

"You did _not_ just quote a Katy Perry song at me."

"Is that a problem?"

"If you're going to criticize me, at least don't do it in the words of a blue-haired, autotuned, Lady Gaga-wanna be."

Blaine considers this statement. "Wait… do you listen to Lady Gaga?" Blaine asks.

Kurt instantly stills in the way he did when Blaine found him listening to showtunes. "Of course that's what you get out of that," Kurt mutters.

"Kurt... are you a little monster?"

Kurt scowls but it's hardly fierce. "I hate you sometimes."

"No you don't," Blaine says. "... I know what hate feels like."

It wasn't supposed to be a sob story of a sentence, but both of knew more than the physocializal sting, the physical pain, the viscal fear of actual, unadulterated hate. The fact is, Kurt throwing out the word hate in minor irritation was as meaningful as something throwing out the word love in reference to ice cream.

Quite by accident, Blaine had stunned the two of them into a serious moment. And he was going to take his chance. Mercedes had encouraged it, and Kurt had seen his staring. Why not now.?

"Look, Kurt," he starts, but not without twisting his fingers together in anxiety. "I don't want to pressure you into anything, because I know how important your independence is to you, but..." God, why is his mouth so parched now? And is Kurt looking paler than normal?

Blaine shrugs, and just says it, and it's like throwing off a heavy winter blanket. "I like you, a lot. I think you're amazing. And we have these moments where we, you know, hold hands or talk about kissing... and then the next moment it's like you're putting up the drawbridge and leaving me outside... and like I said, I don't want to pressure you, but could you let me know, maybe, what's going on, on your side of," he motions a hand between their two bodies. "this."

Now that's done, Blaine has to wait for the blowback. Did he reveal too much of his hand or too soon? Would this push Kurt away for good?

Kurt blinks, his eyes watery after. He shuts his eyelids again, squeezed hard, pulling something under control. "You want to know why... why I'm like this, hot and cold…"

Blaine says nothing. He said his piece. He was afraid he would shatter everything if he said a syllable.

"It's because you fucking terrify me, Blaine."

"What?" Blaine never thought himself capable of terrifying anyone. Small children loved him.

"Blaine, I've spent my entire time in high school trying to keep people away, so I could be safe. And here you are, not held away, not afraid of me. You're just here, here with me. And…" he shrugs, "and I find more and more that I don't mind it, or that I look forward to it. That terrifies me."

"I hate to be contrary, but being with someone, in the most purely platonic sense is sort of normal human interaction," Blaine says sheepishly.

"I'm familiar with the concept of friendship, bowtie."

Blaine hates it now, when Kurt refers to him by that nickname, mostly because it signifies a moment when Kurt's trying to push him away. Like Kurt has successful pushed most everyone else away.

"I tried. Don't you think I tried? Freshman year – I wanted that great high school experience. I wanted friends. So I was myself, and I tried to be open…" Kurt wipes his wrist under his eye, brushing away a droplet before it could become a tear. "And all I ended up with was bruises and… and being scared."

Blaine shifts his weight, but his watch over Kurt doesn't waiver. "I really would like to hug you right now," he says, understanding the importance of that kind of tactil comfort.

Kurt crosses his arms over his chest, curls in. "Well, I don't want you to."

So Blaine doesn't. He stands back, no matter how much he think Kurt needs it. Needs to let Kurt know he fucking gets it. It's not sympathy. It's empathy. Blaine has lived that pain and that fear.

"You mentioned it before, and everyone talks about it. Now I'm going to tell you… I did break someone's fingers." Kurt's gone pokerface, his voice solid steel. "It was near the end of freshman year. I had stayed late in the library to work on a research paper. The hallway was completely deserted, I was packing up at my locker, and this big name on campus jock cornered me in, got in my face, was saying all kinds of horrible things."

Kurt visibly shivers, and Blaine can guess what kinds of things without examples given. He knows the threats, the slurs, the insults that make you feel small and worthless, playing on your own doubts that the world has trained into you.

"His hand was resting on the edge of my open locker." Kurt lifts his own hand into the air in recreation. "Just curled over the edge. I didn't know what he was going to do, but he hadn't touched me… yet. My fight or flight hormones were kicking in, and I saw it. I had the leverage. I could shut the locker door on his hand, and get away while he was in pain. So, I did…" Kurt snorts in a sad laugh. "Do you still want to hug me?"

"I want to hug you even more," Blaine says, and he means it.

"Four broken fingers, Blaine, and a lost college scholarship. I did that to someone. I hurt someone in the way I always feared they would do to me."

"It's different, you know it is," Blaine says, stepping forward on instinct. "You were defending yourself."

"He hadn't touched me."

"You didn't know that he wouldn't."

"All I know is what I did."

"Kurt…" Blaine steps forward again. Kurt's still making himself small, still cross-armed, but he doesn't retreat. Blaine moves until he is standing right in front of Kurt. He grips him by either shoulder, and says directly to him, "You're not wrong for doing what you had to do to survive."

Kurt chokes, a little broken sound. He does it again, then again. He cups his own hand over his mouth, and he's sobbing.

"Kurt," Blaine whispers, an assurance of him being there. He hasn't let go of Kurt's shoulders.

Kurt inches closer to Blaine, ducking his head down onto Blaine's shoulder. Blaine finally pulls Kurt into the hug he needs, and let's Kurt cry for a while.

Someone had finally told Kurt what he needed to hear, what he had been trying to tell himself for years but couldn't believe. And it was heartbreaking.

…

After Kurt calms down, although still sniffle-y, they move back to the couch. They aren't cuddling or holding hands, but Kurt actually sits next to Blaine.

"This is why you terrify me," Kurt says. "I'm not like this with anyone, but I am with you. I never told anyone the truth of what happened, but I told you. I act certain ways, ways that would put a normal person off, but not you. Never you. Your stick around. You give me chances. You _see _more of me than anyone else, and you still _look_ at me like…" He stops. He swallows. "Like I'm worth it. Like I'm beautiful."

"You are." Blaine says it so matter-of-fact.

Kurt lifts his head. "Don't say things like that."

"I can't lie."

Kurt sniffles, digs the heels of his hands into his eyes briefly, which only makes them more red.

Then Kurt says something that makes Blaine's heart beat triple time: "I like you too."

But, of course, nothing with Kurt is simple.

"I don't know what to do with that," Kurt says. "I didn't expect someone like you to come along. Not in high school. I just didn't expect…"

"I understand," Blaine says, even know the subtext that it means they aren't about to become a couple even though they have acknowledged mutual feeling. Even more, he understands… Kurt whole plan for high school had been self-preservation. Blaine doesn't fit into that.

"I'm not saying never… Just give me time, okay, Blaine. Give me time."


	9. Aftermath

Mercedes cozies up to Blaine real quick the next day.

"So," she says, a fake innocuous, examining her fingernails – painted electric blue. "How studying go yesterday?"

"I know you 'forgot' on purpose," Blaine replies.

Mercedes titters. "If you hadn't, I would question you're chances at graduating."

"It was manipulative." He's not really upset. In fact, ultimately Kurt and he aired some important things, shared their feelings, and, if anything, grew closer. But it was the principle.

"I tried non-manipulate, but you wouldn't do anything. Or let me do anything. So I tweaked the circumstances. And now I'm asking, and… _well_?"

"Nothing exploded," Blaine says, but there is a certain lightness to his tone that betrays more.

Mercedes waits. "And…?" she prompts. "Did you two kiss?"

Blaine sputters, "What? No. Where— where would you get that idea?"

He wishes they kissed. To be honest, he's probably subconsciously wished that every day since they met.

Mercedes sighs. "I gave you a golden opportunity, and you didn't confess your feelings and kiss?"

"Hey," Blaine corrects. "I didn't say I didn't confess my feelings."

Mercedes clutches his arm in reactive excitement. "You did! But you didn't kiss? Uh-oh… does he not like you back?" She grimaces, maybe contemplating her plan backfiring.

"I didn't say that either. You know what, why don't you ask Kurt about any of this?"

She rolls her eyes, and it almost has as much attitude as Kurt's eye-rolls. "Because whenever I bring you up, he just blushes."

A grin creeps on Blaine's face. "He does?"

"God, you with the moony eyes and him with the blushing? I think I'm going to die in the crossfire of romantic tension. It's ridiculous."

Blaine's seen Kurt blush a fair few times— pink easily painting across his pale skin. It made him seem less rough-edged, more innocent, more… more of what Blaine's hopes Kurt can be, when he's freed by his own trappings to protect himself from his fears.

Mercedes snaps her fingers in the air in front of Blaine's face to gain his attention. "Good Lord, you just got moony-eyed and Kurt's not even hear. You got it bad, boy."

"I know that," Blaine says.

"You two really need to kiss and get it over with," Mercedes says around a sigh, before abandoning Blaine for homeroom.

…

"Hey."

"Hey."

They take their typical, front row seats in French II. They glance – fleeting, daring, nervous – not sure how to navigate this new ground. Friends, but more than friends, but not really. Their glances catch each other's. Kurt sucks in a hard breathe, that blush Mercedes' mentioned filtering up his neck from under the collar of his dark denim jacket.

"Um," Kurt starts, but Mrs. Boggart interrupts, clearing her throat loudly in the front of the classroom. Kurt's head snaps forward as he goes silent, like he's suddenly transformed into an attentive student.

"I'm tired of you kids always sitting in the same places and always working with the same partners. So get up. Get up. Come on…" The students all awkwardly stand. Mrs. Boggart starts randomly pointing at students from different parts of the room and making them switch seats. "Jayden and Ty, switch. Sasha and Peter. Yes, switch. Marcus and Li. Brett and Emma…" And on.

Most of the students let their dissatisfaction with this teacher-ly turn of events be known through groans and under-their-breathe complaining. Kurt sort of slinks as he stands, looking like he is better and beyond not just this situation, but the class, the school, and the town.

Blaine hopes they'll be overlooked, Kurt and he. He doesn't want to be removed from Kurt's side… Well, from the desk next to Kurt. They barely get to see each other during the school day.

He thinks he might be lucky as Mrs. Boggart slows down on listing names. By now, most of the class mixed up.

But then, "Oh, well, Blaine and Marcia… and I think that's the last one."

Blaine almost feels bad for Marcia, who will have to be paired for French exercises with Kurt. He's cold-shouldered and condescending in French exercises. But first, Blaine feels bad for himself.

He's grown to like being condescended to in French.

…

They're at lunch, the three of them. The conversation is a little stilted, and it's like Kurt and Blaine are unsure what to say, being extra polite. Maybe polite is the wrong word for Kurt's behavior. Surface-level is probably best. They small talk about their food and the weather and class.

Mercedes stands up suddenly. "You two," she snaps, "Are ridiculous. I don't know what exactly happened yesterday afternoon when I gave you a perfectly good opportunity to work this out, but I cannot hang out around this romantic tension anymore."

She stomps off and joins the table where the glee club is sitting.

"Are we that bad?" Blaine asks, when he gets over his stunned silence.

"We're a little off today," Kurt says. "Not nearly as snarky as usual."

Blaine snorts. That feels more like them. He looks up and they make eye contact properly. Kurt grins at him and Blaine grins back.

"I think she has a point, though. We probably should figure out how to be friends in the wake of… you know, yesterday," Blaine says.

"We should be friends like we were before we said all that. Just without, like, the hand holding and almost dates and talking about kissing…" the end of the sentence runs into a murmur.

"Oh, okay."

"Don't sound so disappointed," Kurt chastises.

"In a way I am disappointed," Blaine admits. "But not about being friends with you. That will never be a disappointment."

"I just need time," Kurt says.

"I'll wait," Blaine replies.

…

So they wait. The next day Mercedes deems them "tolerable" enough to hang out with again, if still scoffing regularly whenever either says anything or accidently brushes against the other, causing a blush.

It's hard for Blaine. He feels so much for Kurt, all sorts of things that can't be channeled into the confines of friendship. He's felt them for a while, but now that they had been voiced and accepted? Now that Kurt had admitted some measure of reciprocity? It was just bearable.

But what else could Blaine do but what he promised – to wait? No pushing would hurry Kurt along, and any pushing would be something Blaine knew was wrong.

…

So the rest of the school week ticked by, a day at a time, until Friday came. They see each other in French, then at lunch. After that, Blaine doesn't see hide or pink hair of Kurt. Their paths don't usually cross in the second half of the day, not unless it is intentionally so. It makes Friday afternoon feel like a drag.

That is, until Kurt's outside the choir room after glee club.

"Hey, did you have detention?" Blaine asks with a squinted brow.

"Why would you assume that?" Kurt replies, mildly offended.

"Um, you're here pretty late," he says.

Kurt's eyes dart to the side, then back to Blaine. "Sure," he says.

They start towards the front door like it's automatic. Who hangs around school on a Friday unless they're required to be there?"

They don't stop until they are beside Blaine's car. Blaine scrambles for something to say. "Well, see ya."

Kurt rolls his eyes. "Yeah. You too."

…

Blaine should be doing homework but instead he's laying stomach down on his bed and tracing hearts into the margins of his notebook, decorating with math problems of his and Kurt's initials. He wasn't even ashamed, but he was going to make sure Mercedes never saw these.

There's a knock on his door and he immediately shoves the notebook under his stomach, like he's hiding porn or something. He doesn't want his Mom walking in on this either.

"Come in," he calls.

The door opens. It's not his mom standing there.

Blaine jumps off the bed. "Kurt!"

Kurt tucks his hands in his pocket, scuffles his chuck-clad foot on the carpet. "Your mom sent me up."

Blaine only spares the barest thought on what a shock it must have been to his mother to open the front door to Kurt, with his streaked pink hair, his facial piercings, and all the black. It must have been shocking to hear him ask after Blaine, to hear his name is _Kurt_, presumably the Kurt Blaine had previously mentioned. He didn't look like the type of person Blaine would be friends with, not at all like the uppercut Dalton classmates.

"How are you?" Blaine asks, a little stilted. _What are you doing here?_ would have been too blunt.

Kurt moves into the room, shutting the door behind himself. Kurt is in Blaine's house. Kurt is in Blaine's bedroom. Kurt is in Blaine's room with the door closed.

"I needed to see you."

"Oh." This could be good news. This could be horrible. Either way, what Blaine knows for sure is that his pulse is loudly beating in his own head.

Kurt steps forward, planting his feet, standing now just a pace or two away from Blaine. In front of Blaine.

With all of his chasings, now Kurt had come here. Had come out of his way to find Blaine, to see Blaine. It had to be good, right? This had to be good.

"I just have one thing I need to say to you," Kurt says, voice low, forcing Blaine to lean in to hear him.

"Yeah?" Blaine asks, nervous.

"Fuck waiting," Kurt whispers.

"What?" Blaine asks.

Kurt steps closer so there's barely any space between them. "Fuck waiting. I don't need any more time. What I do need is for you to kiss me."

Kurt presses his hands to either side of Blaine's face and draws him into a hungry kiss.

Blaine's sizzling, every inch of his skin, his entire nervous system, inside and out. He wraps his arms around Kurt's middle and pulls him flush. Is this just a wet dream? Please don't be a dream.

Kurt pulls back, pressing his forehead against Blaine's. He's breathing hard, too hard for the length of their kiss. But Blaine's heart is beating like he's just run a sprint, so Kurt's surely mixed up in his own physical reactions.

"I said… I said I needed time," Kurt breathes, "Because I was scared. What I feel for you is just so big. And for the longest time, the only _big_ things I've felt were bad: fear, anger, hurt, sadness, resentment." He drops a breath or two, and his blinking, catching glisten on his eyelashes.

Blaine can't look at Kurt properly from this close. But he's looked for so long. This is better. He can hold him.

"But what I feel for you isn't bad. And… every day this week I went home and felt wrong. Every day I woke up and couldn't wait to get to school because it meant seeing you. When I left school today, all I could think about was how I wasn't going to see you until three days from now. And wasn't good enough. Suddenly, I knew…"

"Fuck waiting," Blaine says in stereo.

Kurt laughs. "I've never heard you swear before."

"We've never kissed me before. I guess this is a day for firsts."

Kurt laughs again and it's a beautiful sound. They close the gap between their mouths. It's less hungry and more sweet this time, a different variety of kiss, but no less wonderful. That probably has to do with the company Blaine's sharing it with.

* * *

**Aki-** So I totally missed updating last weekend, because I was... idk, tired. Anyway, I should be going back to my regular, updating every week thing unless any unforeseen lumps in my schedule show up. Hope you enjoyed this chapter.


	10. Middle School Hearts

"Now _this_ is adorable," Kurt says with a teasing smirk, picking up Blaine's notebook to examine Blaine's doodles.

Blaine groans in minor embarrassment. However, he just made out with Kurt. He'd have a hard time being upset by most anything.

Kurt's lying on his stomach, cross-wise on Blaine's bed. Blaine's lying likewise. He puts his arm loose around Kurt's waist. He leans up and brushes a kiss on the skin behind Kurt's ear. A shiver runs down Kurt's spine.

Blaine kisses again. Kurt makes a noise in the back of his throat and ducks his head down, exposing more of his neck. Blaine takes this as a signal, a chance to explore more, until he's stopped by the collar of Kurt's shirt.

Kurt huffs through his nose, shifts on the bed so he's on his side, facing Blaine.

"That's one way to distract me from your middle-school hearts," he says.

Blaine can't resist. Closes the space between their faces, kisses Kurt's smile. Kurt obliges him for a minute, kissing back.

Until he starts to laugh. "You can't keep your lips off me," Kurt says.

"I've been wanting to do this for so long," Blaine admits. This isn't a secret. He starts to move in again, but is stilled by Kurt's fingers pressed to his mouth. This is hardly a bad fate.

Kurt drops his hand, his fingertips dragging lightly down Blaine already-sensitive-from-kissing-so-much lips.

"We should talk," Kurt says, usually dreadful words, but they don't sound so dreadful from him. "If we're going to do this… continue to do this… we should define it."

Blaine blinks, thinks for half a second, and says, his simple answer, "Boyfriends."

"That easy?"

"Why does it have to be complicated?" Blaine replies. Every step until this point had been had been hard-navigated and tricky. There had been plenty of twisted ankles, trips, and bruised knees. Now that they arrived, why did it have to be trouble?

"I guess it doesn't…" Kurt blinks his eyes down, runs a finger over the pattern of Blaine's quilt, blinks up. "I suppose I should say though, I'm not really comfortable being all PDA or anything at school, given…" he sighs, doesn't finish.

"It's not a safe environment," Blaine says. "I get it. I really do. Of all people."

Kurt presses his hand to Blaine's neck, kisses Blaine briefly, a peck really, but every touch of Kurt's lips is precious. "Thank you for understanding."

Maybe Blaine's selfish, but now that he's tasted Kurt's lips, has gotten to grip his sides, has gotten to hold him, share him, he doesn't want to stop. He wants more. To drink in more. But Kurt rolls a little farther up on his elbow.

"I probably should be headed home," Kurt says.

"Before you go..." Blaine gets his phone out. "Can I actually get your phone number?"

The tip of Kurt's tongue sticks out between his teeth as he types his number into Blaine's phone. Blaine's had that tongue in his mouth.

"Here." Kurt hands the phone back over. "Just text me sometime saying it's you and I'll add your number to my phone then.

"You realize I'll literally be texting you, at the most, five minutes after you leave."

Kurt smiles, and its less smirk and more tentative. "I really do have to go." Kurt manages to get off the bed gracefully. Blaine scrambles after him.

"I'll walk you out."

Blaine's mom is reading (or pretending to read) a novel in the living room. Blaine expects her to say something as they pass to the front door, but she doesn't. Blaine makes sure the front door is unlocked and then leads Kurt outside, down the front walk, to where Kurt's car is parked along the curb. It's well past dusk.

Kurt stands by the driver's door, shifting unsure. "Well, um…" he starts.

Blaine moves in, hugs him, whispers in his ear, "See you at school."

Kurt nods, says, "Yeah," gets into his car. The engine revs and Blaine steps farther up the curb. He can't see too well through the glass of Kurt's car window in the dark, but he holds up a hand anyway. He thinks he makes out Kurt doing the same.

Back in the house, Mom's book has been discarded. "So _that's_ Kurt," she says, and Blaine can just hear the unsaid words she has pinched behind her teeth.

"You shouldn't be so judgmental, Mom," he says back.

"I said nothing," she replies, voice lofty.

"You were thinking it."

"What I was thinking was… are you _sure_ you're not dating him?" It was a question that wasn't a question. His mom _knew._

"Um," is all Blaine states. Mom just waits. "Well, that relationship status might've just changed this evening…"

Mom puts on her smug 'your momma knows everything' face.

"Tell me one thing, Blaine. Is he nice?"

_Nice_ was never a word Blaine would use to describe Kurt. But _nice_ was surface-level. Cruel people could appear nice.

"He's abrasive," Blaine answers. "But he's good, where it counts."

…

From Blaine: _Told you I'd text you five minutes after you left._

From Blaine: _I know you're probably still driving, but I can't help by wonder… What changed your mind?_

From Kurt: _I was still driving. Don't be clingy ;)_

From Kurt: _I told you. It was about me. I needed the time to figure it out. And it turned out that time was just a few days. _

From Blaine: _I know it's clingy, but I miss you already. _

From Kurt: _I know it's clingy and hypocritical, but I miss you too._

From Blaine: _I don't think you realize how much I like you._

There's a long stretch, longer than the others, before Kurt replies.

From Kurt: _I think I'm going to go to bed early. I'm kinda emotionally exhausted from this week._

From Blaine: _ No problem. Sweet dreams._

From Kurt: _You just want me to dream about you._

From Blaine: _Well, I know I'll be dreaming about you…_

From Kurt: _Goodnight, bowtie_

Blaine crafts four different responses before texting back, simply, _Goodnight._

…

Blaine mopes around his house most of Saturday. Shortly after noon, he texts Kurt: _Can I see you today_

Fifteen minutes or so later, Blaine gets a response. _I'm working._

He debates the idea back and forth in his head like the idea is a tennis ball and his mind the tennis match. It's one in the afternoon when Blaine finds his mother and asks if he can borrow her car.

"Are you going to see Kurt?" She still says 'Kurt' with a strange edge to it.

"Something like that," Blaine replies.

"Be back for dinner," she tells him, waving Blaine off.

He gets her keys from the basket by the door, checks that he has his wallet and cell in his pockets, and drives.

Blaine parks outside Hummel Tire and Lube, and walks in the building to find Kurt working behind the front counter, finishing up a transaction with a customer. Blaine waits in line. Once Kurt hands his current customer, an older lady, her receipt, he finally spots Blaine.

"What're you doing here?" Kurt says.

"My mom's car… it's making a noise," Blaine says, the lie bold-faced and obvious.

"You mom's car is making a noise?" Kurt asks with overt skepticism, but a little amazed.

Blaine props his elbows down on the counter. "Why would I lie about something like that?"

"I can think of a reason," Kurt says, but he's smiling. He leans back, crosses his arms in a fake foreboding. "What kind of noise?"

Blaine clears his throat. "A clang – king?"

"A clanging or a clanking?"

"Uh, both," Blaine says.

Kurt steps back, knocks on his dad's office door, and shout back to him, "Hey, Dad, I'm going to go listen to a noise a customer's car is making in the parking lot."

Blaine hears Burt's muffled "Okay" in response.

"Lead the way," Kurt says.

Blaine takes Kurt out the parking lot where his mother's car is parked. He gets in the front seat as Kurt stands outside. He revs on the car and lowers the window.

"Sounds fine," Kurt says.

"Maybe you have to be in here to hear it," Blaine replies.

Kurt rounds the car and gets in the passenger's seat, pulling the door shut behind him. "Oh, yes," he says, "A very subtle clanging noise."

Blaine reaches across the car and wraps his fingers over Kurt's hand.

"Thanks for coming to see me," Kurt says.

"The pleasure's all mine," Blaine replies.

Kurt snorts. "Who says that?" He doesn't wait for an answer. He just shakes his head and leans over the center console for a kiss. Blaine let's Kurt lead it, and it's miserably short.

"I really do have to work though," Kurt says. "The only way I can make sure my dad doesn't overwork himself is for me to be here to force him not to."

"I understand," Blaine says. How could the world ever overlook how much Kurt cares? It only took Blaine a few encounters with the young man to realize how much passion he held inside his skin. He wasn't the disaffected youth he let them think he was.

…

Sunday they survived apart through running text commentary on their day. On Monday, Blaine slips through the crowd so he can walk next to Kurt, letting the back of his hand brush against Kurt's. Kurt catches his gaze, gives a one-sided grin that's incredibly rich to look at.

Mercedes eyes them hard in the hallway. "Finally," she tells them, her only commentary. "But I really thought Blaine would lose the moony-eyes when you to were finally getting it on."

…

There was something different about kissing Kurt than anyone else Blaine's ever kissed before. There haven't been a lot, but Dalton had more than a few out and open-minded young men. Blaine had been well-liked and, dare he say it, popular amongst the student population there. He's had the opportunity to kiss a few boys. He went on a few dates as well, but never went too far with any of them, never got serious. At Dalton, Blaine had still been healing.

But kissing Kurt… it blew everything other kissing experience in Blaine's backlog out of the water. Probably because it's _Kurt_, who Blaine has wanted so much, who he cares for so much. As inexperienced kisser he is, Kurt wants Blaine too, in a way none of the boys at Dalton did. No fault to them, but Kurt and he shared something deeper.

Blaine also has to admit, Kurt's lip ring adds an interesting twist to the experience.

The kissing, of course, is new and exciting. It, however, is not the only type of intimacy they engage in. Like now, they were cuddled together on the couch after wearing themselves out from making out.

"I told my dad about us," Kurt says, on one such occasion.

"How'd that go?" Blaine asks. He trails his fingers down Kurt's arm.

"The other night at dinner I told him I had to talk to him about something and he said 'yeah' and I said 'you know that Blaine guy?' and he looked me right in the eye, completely serious and deadpan, and said, 'you're dating.'"

Blaine laughs. "Then what happened?"

"Well, because I'm petulant, I said 'no we're not. God.' Then he just gave me this look, like 'really, bitch.' Which is not something he would ever say or probably even think, but it was so clear in his face."

"Did you admit it then?"

"Of course not…," Kurt says, and Blaine can hear the eye roll in his voice. "I finished dinner in stubborn silence then stomped off to my room."

"So he doesn't know?" Blaine questions with moderate confusion.

"I'm not finished the story, Blaine."

"Sorry, please continue."

"Later that night, I crept downstairs. Found my dad lounging in front of the TV in his armchair. I said 'hey dad' and he said 'yes, buddy?' That's what he used to call me all the time when I was kid. It's rare now. I kinda liked hearing it again."

Blaine kisses the top of Kurt's head, that's under his chin. Kurt is languid and starfish-like on top of him. "That's cute."

"Shut up," Kurt says, like he's embarrassed. He continues regardless. "Anyway, I said to him, 'Blaine and I are dating.' And he said, like all fake surprised, 'oh, really now?' I nodded, even though I was sort of behind him in the doorway so he couldn't really see me. He got up from his chair, and he came up to me. And he hugged me. When he was done hugging, he held me by the shoulders, looking at me, and said 'you're growing up, aren't you?' And I didn't know what to say to that, because I don't feel grown up, but at the same time I feel too old already."

"You're so lucky, Kurt," Blaine says. "You're dad's awesome."

Kurt quiet and contemplative for a moment before saying, "I guess he is. But admitting that makes me wish I had been a better son. Not like some straight douche jock or anything, probably what he was expecting when I was born. But like, the last few years, make him come to a few less parent-teacher conferences. Make him not worry so much about me."

"Um, Kurt, I'm not an expert, but I'm sure most parents worry about their kids. Especially the awesome ones."

A new voice, gruffer than either of theirs, enters the conversation, "He's right."

They both jerk upright from where they were lounging on top of each other on the couch in Kurt's living room. Burt is still in his coat, must have just come in from outside not long ago.

"How long have you been eavesdropping?" Kurt asks, a touch of snide covering his shy.

"It's my house. I can listen to whatever I want," Burt says, crossing the room, stopping behind the back of the couch. "And no matter how grown up you get, no matter if you're getting trouble or have a spotless record, I'm going to worry about you, buddy." He places a broad hand atop Kurt's head. Kurt stares up, child-like, and Blaine can only imagine him, a desperate, closeted kid like Blaine had been (and sometimes still feels like).

"Because you're my kid, and I love you." Burt ruffles Kurt hair, then walks off to the kitchen. Kurt hisses like a cat, hands flying to his hair although it had already been ruffled from previous activities before Kurt and Blaine had started cuddling.

"You staying for dinner, Blaine?" Burt calls from the other room.

Blaine looks to Kurt to see if the offer is approved. Kurt just nods.

"Yes, sir!" Blaine calls back.

* * *

aki - if this chapter didn't make you die of cuteness, I did not do my job...


End file.
